Ralph Nader Quotes

“The common belief that coaches must be abusive to be successful is a myth. Research shows that if you find a task fun, you'll perform better. If more coaches took . . . a Golden Rule approach to coaching, treating their players the way they themselves would like to be treated, fewer athletes would drop out of sports in their teens, and more athletes at every level would be happier and more satisfied.”

“Capitalism will always survive, because socialism will be there to save it.”

“The Democratic and Republican parties, two apparently distinct political entities feeding at the same corporate trough.”

“This policy represents a massive injustice against Iraqi civilians, ... and it must be ended - not after Mr. Clinton leaves office, but now.”

“As a public interest lawyer, your fund of injustice will never be empty.”

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.”

“The job of a leader today is not to create followers. It’s to create more leaders.”

“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.”

“A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done.”

“If you choose the lesser of two evils, you are still choosing evil.”

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

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

“[As a child] I was very interested in books that detailed injustice and how people who are underdogs were mistreated throughout history.”

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

“The progress of history is to take the impossible and turn it into the possible.”

“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.”

“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.”

“We must strive to become good ancestors.”

“Once you don't vote your ideals ... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy.”

“I enjoy my work so much that I have to be pulled away from my work into leisure.”

“The whole story of human history is: The blasphemy of today is the commonplace of tomorrow.”

“If you know what's going on and know how society can be improved and happiness advanced, you tend to focus on how to get things done that will help health, safety, opportunity, justice, accountability of powerful institutions to the people they are supposed to serve.”

“Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity.”

“Power has to be insecure to be responsive.”

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