225 Quotes by Ralph Nader

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.

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.’

The history of successful cases, some of which are in this museum, illustrates that often the regulators and legislatures don’t wake up until some plaintiff gets a lawyers and digs out the cover-ups and the incriminating information about a safety defect in an automobile or another product.

A society with more justice needs less charity.

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.

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.

Arbitration is private. It doesn’t have the tools to dig into the corporate files. It’s usually controlled by arbitrators who want repeat business from corporations not from the injured person.

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

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