Great Throughts Treasury

"Often you used the name of your home town as a metaphor for your 1992 presidential campaign, 'The man from Hope. Well, I am sure that many Katrina-displaced families now homeless, or huddling with friends or relatives or in shacks wish that you would give them some hope."

"Once you don't vote your ideals ... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy."

"One of the justifications for this campaign is to preserve and expand the right of third parties and independent candidates to challenge the two-party duopoly system... I see it as a civil liberties issue of free speech."

"Organized labor... rushes to support the party without demanding a turn away from corporatism toward workers"

"Ours is a system of corporate socialism, where companies capitalize their profits and socialize their losses... In effect, they tax you for their accidents, bungling, boondoggles, and mismanagement, just like a government. We should be able to deselect them."

"Passion to limit the liability of predatory corporations toward their injured or defrauded victims."

"People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans."

"People want positive politics demonstrating changes and reforms instead of the politics of personality and personal acrimony enveloped in sterile media forays about the tactics of the day."

"Perish the phrase 'free trade,' ... There's no such thing as free trade with dictatorial regimes who keep costs down by brute force and lure U.S. companies to those countries."

"Power has to be insecure to be responsive."

"Prudence dictates you quickly issue a consumer advisory,"

"Remember. Your purpose is not only to serve but to swerve."

"Sanctions against polluters are feeble and out of date, and are rarely invoked."

"Should be stripped of their non-profit status, and television networks who work with them should realize they are working with a political organization, not an educational organization."

"Since I was a law student, I have been against the death penalty. It does not deter. It is severely discriminatory against minorities, especially since they're given no competent legal counsel defense in many cases. It's a system that has to be perfect. You cannot execute one innocent person. No system is perfect. And to top it off, for those of you who are interested in the economics it, it costs more to pursue a capital case toward execution than it does to have full life imprisonment without parole."

"Sixty-four percent of people polled want a four-way debate. People like debate. They like competition. They like not to fall asleep in front of the TV set, watching the drab debate the dreary."

"Stadiums rise with tax dollars; schools and clinics crumble, in the same city. Grotesque!"

"Suffering from election-year delusion if he thinks his record on the environment is anything to be proud of."

"Taxpayers have been tricked into paying the oil companies and their wealthy investors billions through tax subsidies."

"Thank you for welcoming me to the poorest major city in the United States."

"The bill is anti-consumer and anti-community... It will mean higher prices and fewer choices for low-, moderate- and middle-income families across the nation."

"The citizen activists have no idea what they can discover just by thumbing through it."

"The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers."

"The democracy gap in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the least worst every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the least worst gets worse."

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

"The Democrats know that no matter how many GATTs, NAFTAs, empty OSHAs, and other betrayals...they heap on those labor leaders, they can be had because, once again, the Republicans are deemed worse."

"The dominant institution in this country is the giant corporation."

"The keys to the gate to those tens of millions of Americans are held by the very two parties that small parties are trying to challenge. Never again should we allow this to happen. The choice for the American people should not be between the bad Democrats and worse Republicans."

"The liberal intelligentsia has allowed its party to become a captive of corporate interests."

"The networks are not some chicken-coop manufacturing lobby whose calls nobody returns."

"The only difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is the velocities with which their knees hit the floor when corporations knock on their door. That's the only difference."

"The only place where democracy comes before work is in the dictionary."

"The shortcomings of America's political leaders do not stop at our borders."

"The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun."

"There are a lot of empty seats that are about to be filled with corporatists surrounded by corporate hospitality suites funded by $13 million of taxpayers"

"There are some people in this world who would never plant a seed because it doesn't produce fruit the first season."

"There is a two-tier economy where the top 10% is doing quite well, the top 1% spectacularly. But the top 1% of the richest people in this country have financial wealth equal to the combined 95% of the American people. That's a very unhealthy inequality which is even troubling Alan Greenspan."

"There is, as well, a consumer issue at stake here. Fans have purchased tickets for Eagles' games, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, on the assumption that they will see one of the game's most exciting receivers, so long as he is healthy enough to play. The Eagles' action denies them this opportunity."

"There's a tremendous bias in state laws against third parties and independent candidates, bred by the two major parties, who passed these laws. They don't like competition. So it's like climbing a cliff with a slippery rope."

"These were not conscientious objectors. They were belligerent draft dodgers,"

"They're going to have to reach out or they're going to lose votes."

"This assumption that my votes only come from the Democrats is simply not true,"

"This commission is a political organization designed to support the two major parties and shut out third party and independent candidates... We need to reinvigorate our democracy by having real debates -- not joint press conferences designed to limit the voices heard by voters."

"This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies."

"This country is run by a war criminal and his vice president, an even bigger war criminal."

"This is a medical malpractice crisis. Over 80,000 Americans, 220 every day, die from medical negligence. Hundreds of thousands are injured."

"This is another frivolous complaint that the FEC has properly dismissed."

"This welfare for wealthy companies wastes taxpayer dollars, harms the environment, and makes a mockery of the recent reductions in federal social spending programs."

"To shut out legitimate third-party candidates from these debates is to limit the competitive democratic process on which the American electoral system is supposed to be built,"

"Today the large organization is lord and master, and most of its employees have been desensitized much as were the medieval peasants who never knew they were serfs."