Ralph Nader Quotes

The association of poverty with progress is the enigma of our times.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that America has made - and maybe the world because this is, sort of, the core of communism and socialism - is that you can have perfect solutions to social problems like poverty, like crime. You're not going to eliminate all crime. Maybe you'll never eliminate all poverty.

Many developing countries continue to be burdened by high percentages of their population living in poverty. Yet, instead of addressing this root cause of conflict, many states, ironically, increase their military might in order to control increasingly desperate populations.

I started out young and idealistic, and it was all about social justice and fair distribution of resources. I didn't understand why everybody couldn't be equally prosperous.

It is conflict overall that mires people in poverty. That is the first law of development.

Though there might not be any easy answers to the problem of poverty, its most compelling scribes do not resign themselves to representation solely for the sake of those age-old verities of truth and beauty.

We are in a bad way. That herd of wild asses' colts [see Job 11:12], braying and kicking up their heels, is an unsatisfactory result of a hundred years of Democracy.

Poverty is a corrosive brew, capable of eating away at the underpinnings of democratic life itself.

One of the most frustrating things is to see a country in which you had elections, the elections were a success, but then you have to say to people nothing can be improved in the next few months, even in the next few years, in infrastructure, in water, in sanitation, in health, in education, in jobs.

I am inheriting a country which has been badly ravaged by years of misrule and ineptitude. There has been a wide disconnect between the people and the government.

Yes, climate change is an existential threat, but there's also kind of this existential issue of why is it that as our society is progressing... things seem to be regressing and getting worse for a large number of people? Why is that happening? How do we fix that?

I see that that 'American dream' is slipping away because we're not solving the problems of today, we're not planning for the future.

Obama had to save the banks, sure, but he didn't have to save the bankers and the shareholders and the bondholders. We broke the rules of capitalism in order to save those at the top - as we always do.

When you socially neglect a people, when you economically abandon a people, when you transfer wealth from them to the well-to-do, what are a people going to do? They're going to respond with very sad forms of despair, and that's true for everybody - I don't care what color you are.

This country has so much wealth and so much poverty, and that seemed wrong to me. 'Evicted' was my Ph.D. dissertation.

The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own time.

If we want to save our country, we must all realize that the breakdown of our culture is trapping millions of people in a cycle of poverty and dependence, and together, we have to do something about it.

In a system that disproportionately harms poor people and people of color, too many Americans have lost faith in the essential American principle of equal justice under law.

There is a lot of inequality in Colombia. We have to correct that.

We cannot pretend we do not have problems; we cannot pretend things are not wrong in our country. A lot of things are wrong.

Urbanisation, poverty, youth unemployment are leading to violence-prone cities.

Any time there is a new idea, it can take some time for policy to catch up to it.

People have almost been lulled into complacency because there are no signs over the water fountains. But the signs have been in the policies. There's still housing discrimination and wage discrimination.

I'm very keen that we have this debate about the good parts of inequality and the bad parts of inequality. It's not a one-sided thing.