Kerry Kennedy Quotes

Perhaps the single most effective antagonist of American business is Ralph Nader, who - thanks largely to the media - has become a legend in his own time and an idol of millions of Americans.

Many financial and industrial companies have been bailed out with the public's money, but very few of those who had run those companies have been punished for their failures. Yes, the top managers of those companies have lost their jobs - but with a fat pension and mostly with a handsome severance payment.

In every case, the environmental hazards were made known only by independent scientists, who were often bitterly opposed by the corporations responsible for the hazards.

Merchandise from Wal-Mart has become as ubiquitous as the water supply. Yet, still, the company is rebuked and reviled by anyone claiming a social conscience and is lambasted by legislators as if its bad behavior places it somewhere between investment bankers and the Taliban.

I think I was the first executive to ever speak at a Greenpeace business conference, in London in 2001. That didn't play well here at Ford, but I thought it was an important signal to send internally, that these were the kind of issues we needed to be grappling with.

On April 16, 2010, 34 Chinese environmental organizations, including Friends of Nature, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, and Green Beagle, questioned heavy metal pollution in a letter sent to CEO Steve Jobs.

As a psychopathic creature, the corporation can neither recognize nor act upon moral reasons to refrain from harming others.

Taking on corporate greed is an environmental concern.

Excessive pay and rewards for failure are bad for shareholders, the economy and society.

If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites.

The larger the state, the more callous it becomes... the colder its heart. It is also true that the bigger the corporation, the more callous its heart. But unlike the state, corporations have competition and have no police powers.

The 'Occupy' movement seems to have found a central theme to its 2012 movement around overturning 'the corporation as a person,' and some legislators are supporting that concept.

Shareholders have the right and obligation to set the parameters of corporate behavior within which management pursues profit.

Look at your business and the activities that you undertake. Then, start to think about not just your economic concerns, but about social and environmental impacts that businesses have.

I hope they can see that as a consumer, if they express themselves, they may make an impact and leverage their impact on the brands, and the brands can leverage their buying power on tens of thousands of polluters - suppliers - in China.

If corporations are people, as the Supreme Court wishes us to believe, they are stunningly unpatriotic ones.

BP has finally acknowledged what the American people have been saying for weeks: It must take responsibility for its reckless conduct, clean up the Gulf and compensate the countless victims of the disaster it caused.

Ralph Nader is the single most effective antagonist of American business.

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like.

Corporate 'citizens' are the leading outlaws. They may regularly violate the law without surrendering their political rights.

My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now.

Excessive pandering to stockholders is as bad as any other form of pandering

Anything that benefits workers, the environment, or the general population is going to reduce their [the corporation’s] profits.

… the blindness and greed of the so-called captains of industry.

There's a myth out there that you have to genuflect at the altar of quarterly earnings. But it's a false choice that you can either be a good fiduciary or promote values such as environmental sustainability.