Ralph Nader Quotes

“Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.”

“We have the most prolonged adolescence in the history of mankind. There is no other society that requires so many years to pass before people are grown up ... Adolescence is nurtured and prolonged by educational processes and by industry that has found a bonanza in embracing the adolescent population and fortifying 'adolescent values.' This prolongation of adolescence robs the country of the population group having the most risk takers, and the highest ideals.”

“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.”

“To top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole.”

“A wasteful defense is a weak defense.”

“The civil justice system is a backup system when the criminal justice system fails.”

“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.”

“The clinical definition of "fascism" is when private concentrated economic power takes government away from the people, turns government into a guarantor, a subsidizer, a covering of corporate power.”

“There's no better policy in a society then pursuing a health and safety of its people.”

“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.”

“Members of Congress are like the voters in one respect -- they want to go with the winners.”

“General Motors could buy Delaware if DuPont were willing to sell it.”

“Every time I see something terrible, it's like I see it at age 19. I keep a freshness that way.”

“It is basically a strategy to destroy the essence of democracy, which is the competitiveness and choices of candidates on the ballot.”

“We have two parties who are basically hijacking our country for their corporate paymasters. And if we focus on 535 members of Congress, that's not all that many, we're going to see a fast turnaround. So focus all your concerns, all the information, the kind of agenda the Green Party has. Turn it right on your Senators and Representatives.”

“Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs.”

“Ninety-seven percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 are white men, and what they do radiates all the way down into poor areas and cities around our country. Like predatory lending and misallocation of municipal services. These guys get municipal service, poor areas don't. So they run the economy into the ground, and who suffers the most? The poor pay more and they die earlier.”

“Congress is the most powerful branch. It can expand a progressive society, or it can block a progressive society.”

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

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

“The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”

“This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies.”

“The corporations are worried about their reputational damage and a lot of the social media inflicts that, but it's hard to measure it.”

“Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory.”

“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.”