Ralph Nader Quotes

There are times when the end justifies the means. But when you build an argument based on a whole series of such times, you may find that you've constructed an entire philosophy of evil." --Luke Skywalker

To do evil that good may come of it is for bunglers in politics as well as morals.

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

There's a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way.

I believe that it is preferable sometimes to have one candidate rather another candidate, while you understand that that is not the solution. Sometimes the lesser evil is not so lesser, so you want to ignore that, and you either do not vote or vote for third party as a protest against the party system.

Be entirely tolerant or not at all; follow the good path or the evil one. To stand at the crossroads requires more strength than you possess.

I don't consider Hillary Clinton to be the lesser of two evils.

For the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil, since the lesser evil is rather to be chosen than the greater. .

Tolerance cannot afford to have anything to do with the fallacy that evil may convert itself to good.

Every time we have had a presidential election where there is "White or Black," you always have to choose between the lesser of two evils, so you either vote for "Satan" or the "Devil," and you catch hell with either one.

the two major parties too often present us with a choice of the evil of two lessers.

And don't tell me the end justifies the means because it doesn't. We never reach the end. All we ever get is means. That's what we live with.

You think that you can judge what's good or evil from whether you enjoy doing it or not. You think that evil is what always appears in the form of a temptation, while good is what you never spontaneously want to do. I think this is all total rubbish, if you don't mind my saying so.

When you have established that one alternative is good and the other is evil, there is no justification for the choice of a mixture. There is no justification ever for choosing any part of what you know to be evil.

The disesteem into which moralists have fallen is due at bottom to their failure to see that in an age like this one the function of the moralist is not to exhort men to be good but to elucidate what the good is. The problem of sanctions is secondary.

Morality and ethics are nothing but footballs, wherewith people, strong people play to win points.

Man is naturally self-centered and he is inclined to regard expediency as the supreme standard for what is right and wrong. However, we must not convert an inclination into an axiom that just as man's perceptions cannot operate outside time and space, so his motivations cannot operate outside expediency; that man can never transcend his own self. The most fatal trap into which thinking may fall is the equation of existence and expediency.

Anyone who maintains absolute standards of good and evil is dangerous. As dangerous as a maniac with a loaded revolver.

But now I wonder--what if everyone is pretty much the same and it's just a thousand small choices that add up to the person you are? No good or evil, no black and white, no inner demons or angels whispering the right answers in our ears like it's some cosmic SAT test. Just us, hour by hour, minute by minute, day by day,making the best choices we can. The thought is horrifying. If that's true, then there's no right choice. There's only choice.

Most things that are politically right are morally wrong

Why are we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that.

Morality which is based on ideas, or on an ideal, is an unmitigated evil.

One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue.

I'm offended by the is-ought fallacy, which has been used to justify slavery, women not being allowed to vote, children working in factories.

Good and evil both increase at compound interest.