Quotes About Ralph Nader

#1. When it came to the 2000 election, 84 percent of Ivy League faculty voted for Al Gore, 6 percent for Ralph Nader and 9 percent for George Bush. In the general electorate, the vote was split at 48 percent for Gore and Bush, and 3 percent for Nader.

Walter E. Williams

#2. Ralph Nader is a hero. I know Ralph, and I call him up occasionally. He's helped me out on a couple of occasions when I've given speeches to corporations where he'd have a good ... He'd give me some good information.

Al Franken

#3. I have been in the witness protection program for the last three weeks. I campaigned for Ralph Nader. I'm now living as a woman in Mississippi.

Phil Donahue

#4. And Ralph Nader, God bless him, still out there campaigning. Ralph Nader said today he has set a record for the most campaign speeches given in one day. He gave 21 speeches in one day. Of course, we have to take his word for it, because of course, there are no witnesses.

Jay Leno

#5. I think Ralph Nader is the biggest liar in American politics when he said it didn't matter who was president.

James Carville

#6. I'm voting for Gore because the other is unthinkable. Which most of us will probably do. I hope all of us. I've always liked Ralph Nader and would like to see a real third party, but the thought of George Bush as president is unthinkable.

Richard Gere

#7. I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I will not make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead.

Hunter S. Thompson

#8. I don't for the life of me understand how anybody could contemplate the results of the 2000 election in the US and say that electoral politics doesn't matter any more, and that Ralph Nader was right when he said there is no difference between the two parties.

Todd Gitlin

#9. John Kerry and Ralph Nader met face-to-face, it was a historic meeting. Astronomers said today their meeting actually created what is called a 'charisma black hole.'

Jay Leno

#10. I admire Ralph Nader and Denis Kucinich very much, and insofar as they bring up issues and carry out an educational and organisational function - that's important, and fine, and I support it.

Noam Chomsky

#11. John Kerry met with Ralph Nader last week. Both sides of every issue were discussed. And then, Nader spoke.

Jay Leno

#12. Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who - thanks largely to the media - has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans.

Lewis F. Powell Jr.

#13. The Clinton era is over. I think that there would even have been a certain amount of rejoicing among some Republicans if Gore had won or if Ralph Nader had won or if Satan had won.

Tucker Carlson

#14. Sooner or later, you're gonna listen to Ralph Nader.

Pete Shelley

#15. I don't know whether I see it as slipping inside the villains, but part of what makes Ralph Nader and Michael Moore such effective speakers and communicators is that they know how corporate culture works, how our lawmaking bodies really work, and where the bones are buried.

Jello Biafra

#16. I told Mr. Nader today that a vote for Ralph Nader is really a vote for George Bush.

Barbara Lee

#17. If Ralph Nader runs, President Bush is going to be re-elected, and if Ralph Nader doesn't run, President Bush is going to be re-elected. We're going to run on the president's strong and principled leadership and his positive agenda for a second term.

Ed Gillespie

#18. On Election Day, Ralph Nader will appear on the presidential ballot in only 45 states. Yeah, Nader said, this is really disappointing, I wanted to embarrass myself in all 50 states. That was the plan.

Conan O'Brien

#19. Ralph Nader has slavery reparations on his platform, which makes me think he's not serious. If he thought he could win he wouldn't even say that.

Dave Chappelle

#20. I know what I wish Ralph Nader would investigate next. Marriage. It's not safe, it's not safe at all.

Jean Kerr

#21. I believe that voices like Ross Perot (search), Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader should be heard. They don't have to be president. Give 'em a chance.

Kinky Friedman

#22. Once, Princess Leigh-Cheri used a papal candlestick for the purpose of self-gratification. She had hoped that at the appropriate moment she might be visited by either the Lamb or the Beast, be, as usual, only Ralph Nader attended her.

Tom Robbins

#23. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes.

Dave Barry

#24. I don't like too much by-standing, on-looking, and spectator-behavior in people's lives.

Ralph Nader

#25. I think Hillary Clinton is a militarist. She is a political coward. The interesting thing about Hilary Clinton, like Bill Clinton dodging the draft, he never touched the Pentagon - she is in the same position.

Ralph Nader

#26. For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury, and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people.

Ralph Nader

#27. The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference.

Ralph Nader

#28. Power has to be insecure to be responsive.

Ralph Nader

#29. I have a consistent rule: The American people should know as much about the Pentagon as the Soviet Union and China do, as much about General Motors as Ford does, and as much about City Bank as Chase Manhattan does.

Ralph Nader

#30. Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers.

Ralph Nader

#31. The accountability of government has gone to the point where the very use of the law is the instrument of illegality.

Ralph Nader

#32. The lesser of two evils, or the least of the worst, is not good enough for the American people anymore.

Ralph Nader

#33. The networks are not some chicken-coop manufacturing lobby whose calls nobody returns.

Ralph Nader

#34. This country has been strip-mined by rich and powerful interests. If you dont like what they're doing, don't just sit there. Vote them out.

Ralph Nader

#35. No presidential candidate should visit Las Vegas without condemning organized gambling.

Ralph Nader

#36. The corporations have become our government. They're not just influential. Department by department, you name it, they put their people in high government positions, they have 10,000 PACs and 35,000 lobbyists, so there's no more opening to be heard.

Ralph Nader

#37. End perverse incentives that reward Wall Street speculators.

Ralph Nader

#38. Obama & McCain differ, but neither takes on corporations.

Ralph Nader

#39. The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers.

Ralph Nader

#40. We must strive to become good ancestors.

Ralph Nader

#41. Nothing short of a federal investigation can begin to disclose the abuses which have woven a fine web of mutually implicating relationships between businessmen and government officials.

Ralph Nader

#42. National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

Ralph Nader

#43. A wasteful defense is a weak defense.

Ralph Nader

#44. If it is unpatriotic to tear down the flag, which is a symbol of the country, why isn't it more unpatriotic to desecrate the country itself-to pollute, despoil and ravage the air, land and sea.

Ralph Nader

#45. We don't measure whether an economy is developing. We just measure whether companies are selling more, whether inventories are up or down, not whether the health, safety and economic well-being of people are being advanced.

Ralph Nader

#46. Is there a number or mark planned for the hand or forehead in a new cashless society? YES, and I have seen the machines that are now ready to put it into operation.

Ralph Nader

#47. We should tax things we don't like. We should tax pollution ... And we should lighten the taxes on things we do like, like honest labor, like food.

Ralph Nader

#48. The central challenge for any company, regardless of its size, is to keep doing a better job for its customers.

Ralph Nader

#49. Nothing can stop the power of an informed citizenry when it is empowered, organized, and motivated.

Ralph Nader

#50. Things have gotten so bad in this country, you look back at Richard Nixon with nostalgia.

Ralph Nader

#51. The food industry, its trade associations, and research foundations, is well financed and highly organized to pressure the FDA.

Ralph Nader

#52. People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.

Ralph Nader

#53. Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses ... in effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to deselect them.

Ralph Nader

#54. It was an injured worker finding a lawyer on a contingent fee in a little town in Texas that blew the top off one of the greatest industrial disasters in American history.

Ralph Nader

#55. Water is the most precious, limited natural resource we have in this country ... But because water belongs to no one - except the people - special interests, including government polluters, use it as their private sewers.

Ralph Nader

#56. Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked.

Ralph Nader

#57. She was the light of our lives, our anchor, compass and vision.

Ralph Nader

#58. By the time you rise through the ranks, the culture of homogenization has bred the spirit and imagination out of you.

Ralph Nader

#59. Word of mouth is the most effective means of communication.

Ralph Nader

#60. We are practicing what we preach so that we may preach what we practice.

Ralph Nader

#61. A society that has more justice is a society that needs less charity.

Ralph Nader

#62. President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people.

Ralph Nader

#63. George W. Bush is very vulnerable but not if you campaign the way the major candidates - except for Dean and Kucinich - are campaigning.

Ralph Nader

#64. The concept of individual with a conscience is one whose highest allegiance is to his fellow man.

Ralph Nader

#65. This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies.

Ralph Nader

#66. General Motors could buy Delaware if DuPont were willing to sell it.

Ralph Nader

#67. Families are incubators for citizen activists.

Ralph Nader

#68. Annual drug deaths: tobacco: 395,000, alcohol: 125,000, 'legal' drugs: 38,000, illegal drug overdoses: 5,200, marijuana: 0. Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is our government protecting us from in the drug war?

Ralph Nader

#69. I think George W. Bush's personality was overwhelmingly shaped in negative ways by his upbringing.

Ralph Nader

#70. If you're not turned on by politics, politics will turn on you.

Ralph Nader

#71. What we have now is democracy without citizens. No one is on the public's side. All the buyers are on the corporations' side. And the bureaucrats in the Administration don't think the government belongs to the people.

Ralph Nader

#72. Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it.

Ralph Nader

#73. Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.

Ralph Nader

#74. The civil justice system is a backup system when the criminal justice system fails.

Ralph Nader

#75. The reason that democracies always defeat dictatorships is because they're open to debate. We should never allow Washington to say, 'Shut up, get in line and wave the flag.'

Ralph Nader

#76. LOST: 60 SECONDS
DON'T BOTHER LOOKING FOR THEM BECAUSE THEY ARE GONE FOREVER

Ralph Nader

#77. When do corporations begin to lose their credibility? They fought Social Security, Medicare, auto safety. They fought every social justice movement in this country.

Ralph Nader

#78. Nuclear power must be dealt with irrationally ... Nuclear plants are carcinogens. Let's get that story out ... Their lies will catch up to them. We need endless Chernobyl reminders.

Ralph Nader

#79. Up against the corporate government, voters find themselves asked to choose between look-alike candidates from two parties vying to see who takes the marching orders from their campaign paymasters and their future employers. The money of vested interest nullifies genuine voter choice and trust.

Ralph Nader

#80. The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights ... have pressured retailers on campus and off to publicly disclose the factory names and addresses.

Ralph Nader

#81. Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I.

Ralph Nader

#82. Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power. They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability. They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value.

Ralph Nader

#83. It's not a cost of doing business when the corporation executives go to jail, and that's why they fight so hard to make sure the prosecutors' budget are very limited and that the campaign cash-greased lawmakers keep defending them against being held accountable.

Ralph Nader

#84. The flow from knowledge to action draws upon the complete person with his or her catalyst and synergistic potential.

Ralph Nader

#85. If they don't close these [nuclear] reactors down, we'll have civil war in five years.

Ralph Nader

#86. If God hadn't meant for us to eat sugar, he wouldn't have invented dentists.

Ralph Nader

#87. We have an underdeveloped democracy and overdeveloped plutocracy.

Ralph Nader

#88. You should not allow yourself the luxuries of discouragement of despair. Bounce back immediately, and welcome the adversity because it produces harder thinking and harder drive to get to the objective.

Ralph Nader

#89. The liberal intelligentsia has allowed its party to become a captive of corporate interests.

Ralph Nader

#90. Ford Motor Company's sluggish and piecemeal approach to its automotive responsibilities betrays motorists' safety.

Ralph Nader

#91. Your best teacher is your last mistake.

Ralph Nader

#92. The shortcomings of America's political leaders do not stop at our borders.

Ralph Nader

#93. Justice needs money; it always has ... whether for abolition of slavery and early women's rights movements or the civil rights and environmental drives of our generation.

Ralph Nader

#94. Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.

Ralph Nader

#95. If you don't turn on to politics, politics will turn on you.

Ralph Nader

#96. When people ask, 'Why should the rich pay a larger percent of their income than middle-income people?' My answer is not an answer most people get: It's because their power developed from laws that enriched them.

Ralph Nader

#97. If, during the Second World War, the United States had retooled its factories for manufacturing bicycles instead of munitions, we'd be one of the healthiest, least oil-dependent, and most environmentally-sound constituents in the Nazi empire today.

Ralph Nader

#98. A society with more justice needs less charity.

Ralph Nader

#99. You just can't get anything done. You can't get hearings, you can't get legislation, you can't get responses by the regulatory agencies - you can't get anything done. I'm a realist. I don't work harder and harder to get less and less.

Ralph Nader

#100. To know and no to do is not to know.

Ralph Nader