Ralph Nader Quotes

The more privilege you have, the more opportunity you have. The more opportunity you have, the more responsibility you have.

Are the welfare and safety of the whole body politic anything else than the welfare and safety of all its individual members?

O people of America. The destinies of your country are in your own hands. They are committed to your own keeping. It is for you to say which ye will have, liberty or slavery, knowledge or ignorance, happiness or misery.

The public happiness is the true object of legislation, and can be secured only by the masses of mankind themselves awakening to the knowledge and the care of their own interests.

In the back of my mind, always, is the firmly held belief that public policies must serve the long-term interests and well-being of the community at large.

In giving rights to others which belong to them, we give rights to ourselves and to our country

.. becoming attached to a country involves pressing, uncomfortable questions about justice and opportunity for its least powerful citizens.

There are powerful forces undermining progress in Africa. But one must never underestimate the power of the people to bring about change.

Every generation is confronted anew with the task not to look the other way when injustice occurs. ... Everyone is responsible for what he does and co-responsible for what he lets happen.

We have a duty to look after each other. If we lose control of our government, then we lose our ability to dispense justice and human kindness. Our first priority today, then, is to defeat utterly those forces of greed and corruption that have come between us and our self-governance.

To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.

We cannot have a just society that applies the principle of accountability to the powerless and the principle of forgiveness to the powerful. This is the America in which we currently reside.

To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity.

Although military, economic and political strength certainly favors the more powerful side, the matter of simple justice is a counterbalancing factor.

Frankly, I'm tired of the powerful getting away with all kinds of stuff. Hillary [Clinton] didn't win - and, folks, there are ways without an actual prosecution.

As man is so constituted that it is utterly impossible for him to attain happiness save by seeking the happiness of others, so does it seem to be of the nature of things that individuals and classes can obtain their own just rights only by struggling for the rights of others.

A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.

I can't look in the mirror and see people dying on the street that should have the same opportunities that I've had. And say 'You know what? I can live with myself.' Because I can't if I just watch.

If any man is rich and powerful he comes under the law of God by which the higher branches must take the burnings of the sun, and shade those that are lower; by which the tall trees must protect the weak plants beneath them.

To be human you must bear witness to justice.

I feel good when I'm engaged in what I think are the core issues of the society, and those core issues to me are what's happening to poor folks in this society.

I thank God that I've lived long enough to see what I have seen, and I pray that people will continue to do better. We are doing better, it may not seem so, but there was a time when people were lynched in the middle of the street and it was not against the law. We are doing better, but we have so much more to do.

When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city...

We have previously suggested that philanthropy combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.