Ralph Nader Quotes

The time is coming when all businesses will have to be done with glass pockets.

Every employee, not just the senior people, should know how a company is doing.

I have always felt that public, commercial and community organisations should be as open as possible about their affairs. They need to be accountable to their owners, their customers, their members and communities and other interest groups.

No, I was pleased that it is possible for somebody who makes full disclosure as I've done, not only of the contributors, but also how the money is spent.

I firmly believe that the most important feature of spending the people's money is complete transparency.

If my company spends money, it should be disclosed to the shareholders and how it was spent. With my personal money, I can do anything I want. But company money should be disclosed.

Using cold facts and figures, leaders throughout the West must become more transparent with their citizens in explaining their decisions and their choices in global markets.

The concern is the Government is not coming clean and informing the Australian public of the assumptions that they have made to give rise to a $10.4 billion package.

When I was minister of sport in Brazil, I tried to bring in a law that would make the chairmen of clubs reveal their accounts like other businesses. It was turned down, but I think it is an important story that will make a good film.

I hope we’re on the road to more truth-telling to investors.

We should certainly declassify any information that we know that the enemy knows. At that point it is only the American people who are in the dark.

The future will find one of its great problems is deciding how big a business enterprise must become before the public is entitled to know the full details of its management.

Most leaks from large bureaucracies are “good” leaks: no danger to national security, no harm to innocent people, information the public ought to know.

My obligation is to disclose companies in which I'm an officer, a director, or an investor.

Maybe Governor Romney in the spirit of openness should tell us how much money he's made off of how many households that have been foreclosed by his investments.

I don't know why people don't want to talk about their numbers. I guess in a sense, there's a bit of performer nudity, a bit of ego nudity when you expose your numbers, I guess because someone's are higher or someone's are lower. I've never really talked about the numbers with anyone, so maybe I'm not supposed to.

We've got to break through the wall of secrecy. It's America's fate.

I think there are two basic approaches you can use for campaign finance. One is complete openness, everybody knows absolutely everything, but no limits. But you let people decide.The other is just have a national public system.

The deadly weapon against totalitarian society is openness - doing everything very openly on the Internet, letting people know every detail, any little development. Once it is out there, everybody can make their own judgement. [Therefore] holding a trial outside the court. I think that is fairness, that is justice, that is a civil society. Otherwise call it an evil society because everything is hidden.

Openness fundamentally affects a lot of the core institutions in society - the media, the economy, how people relate to the government and just their leadership.

I recognize the need to provide the press - and, through you, the American people - with information to the fullest extent possible. In our democracy, the work of the Pentagon press corps is important, defending our freedom and way of life is what this conflict is about, and that certainly includes freedom of the press.

I've spent a lot of time working on declassified documents - and they do get declassified after decades - you look at the record of declassified documents, and they are mostly concerned with keeping what the government does secret from its own population. It's mostly defense of the power system from its own population. Very little is authentic security.

The American people can always be trusted with the information.

Let the people know the truth and the country is safe.

I think we do sympathize. And a lot of us think a lot of what Snowden did was great, and you're abetting him. But, we also think, well, if we are going to have someone who is going to be the one to take secret materials and disseminate it...why you? You weren't elected to that post. That seems to be what the question always comes down to.