Ralph Nader Quotes

There's one political party in this country, and that's the corporate party.

In my view, what really counts here, as our political system falls apart before our very eyes, where voters really feel like they've been thrown under the bus, for good reason, and where they are dropping out of these two corporate-sponsored political parties.

The Democratic and Republican parties, two apparently distinct political entities feeding at the same corporate trough.

It has become more and more obvious that there is one political party in America, and that is The Business Party.

I have been saying for the some time now that America has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corporation, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.

The Party System was founded on one national notion of fair play. It was the notion that folly and futility should be fairly divided between both sides.

Even as a partisan Republican, I'm not sure a 40-year run is healthy for either party.

All I will say is that there are particular features of the American constitutional system that renders a third party futile - at best.

There's no place for a third party in the United States.

These great forces are in such combination and agreement that it is well-nigh impossible for honest competition to be set up against them.

Americans are not getting screwed by the Republican Party. They're getting screwed by the large corporations that bought and own the Republican Party.

There are party leaders, big corporation, Wall Street. There are very wealthy individuals who kind of represent where the Democratic Party, the official Democratic Party was and to some extent still is.

Due to the major demographic changes we have gone through in the last few years in this country, we will be a majority/minority nation and there are a large number of people who do not like that. Donald Trump has tapped into those people's fears because he comes from the extreme right wing part of the Republican Party, as does Ted Cruz. They believe that we should cut taxes to wealthy Americans and enforce anti immigrant laws. They don't believe in Education or Social Security, they would end it and change it and privatize it.

We all know that election reform takes time. That's because those who have benefited from the system are the ones who fight hardest to preserve it. So if we're going to succeed, we need an independent coalition of citizens who believe in reform, who believe that our election laws should treat every voter equally, who believe that low levels of competition and participation are not healthy for democracy. The Independence Party is helping to build that coalition and I am happy to join you in doing so.

The government is a functionary of the corporations - and there's nothing new about that. You can find people in the 1930s talking about the army basically working for Wall Street in all of these countries [it invades].

The problem with the Tea Party is they're all ignorant hillbillies who drink moonshine and ride around on mules. And they believe in stereotypes too.

To the extent that our political dialogue is such where everything is under suspicion, everybody is corrupt and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons, and all of our institutions are full of malevolent actors - if that's the storyline that's being put out there by whatever party is out of power, then when a foreign government introduces that same argument with facts that are made up, voters who have been listening to that stuff for years, who have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio or other venues, they're going to believe it.

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.

We have a Democratic Party that cannot defend the American people from the worst Republican Party in history because it's a Democratic Party of war and Wall Street.

Wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing - correctly - that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations, but failed to realize that eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people.

It's not the possibility of Stalinism in the U.S. that's worrying me, it's the fact that the Stalinist C.P. seems doomed to fail and to bring down with it all the humanitarian tendencies I personally believe in--all the while acting as a mould on which its obverse the fascist mentality is made--and this recent massacre is certainly a sign of Stalinism's weakness not of its strength. None of that has anything to do with Marx's work--but it certainly does influence one's attitude towards a given political party.

...the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are beholden to industry. They always will be. And, the American people are fooled when they think that if you can just get McGovern instead of Humphrey, or if you can get a Democrat instead of a Republican, this will be the end of our problems.

The Republicans went so far to the right that they just can't get votes. They've become a dedicated party of the very rich and the corporate sector.

There are two parties, so-called, but they're really factions of the same party, the Business Party.

I am not interested in a third party. I do not believe it has any future.