Jim Hightower Quotes

Even a little dog can piss on a big building.

If you don't speak out now when it matters, when would it matter for you to speak out?

Some people say we need a third party. I wish we had a second one.

So now is the time, more than ever, for those who truly value all the principles of democracy, especially including dissent, to be the most forceful in speaking up, standing up and speaking out.

Little ol' boy in the Panhandle told me the other day you can still make a small fortune in agriculture. Problem is, you got to start with a large one.

The water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek.

Populists have always been out to challenge the orthodoxy of the corporate order and to empower workaday Americans so they can control their own economic and political destinies. This approach distinguishes the movement from classic liberalism, which seeks to live in harmony with concentrated corporate power by trying to regulate excesses.

When I entered politics, I took the only downward turn you could take from journalism.

Banks don't commit crimes. Bankers do. And they won't ever stop if they don't have to pay for their crimes.

Politics ought to be fun. It shouldn't be just boring meetings.

There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.

The corporation cannot be ethical, its only responsibility is to make a profit.

If it's dangerous to talk to yourself, it's probably even dicier to listen.

The middle of the road is for yellow lines and dead armadillos.

Republicans are so empty-headed, they wouldn't make a good landfill.

Ronald Reagan's idea of a good farm program was Hee Haw.

If you don't speak out when it matters, when would it matter to speak out?

The opposite of courage is not cowardice, it is conformity.

The opposite for courage is not cowardice, it is conformity. Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

The Bible declares that on the sixth day God created man. Right then and there, God should have demanded a damage deposit.

You have to learn to read between the lies.

You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force.

But, as my mother used to tell me, two wrongs don't make a right. But I soon figured out that three left turns do.

Founders v. Bush brings the wisdom and eloquence of the Founding Fathers back to the people, while unmasking the fraudulent PR machine that is corrupting their words and stealing our legacy.

It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.

The corporations don't have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government.

Populism is not a style, it's a people's rebellion against the iron grip that big corporations have on our country - including our economy, government, media, and environment.

Even a dead fish can go with the flow.

Reagan promised everyone a seven-course dinner. Ours turned out to be a possum and a six-pack.

America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.

The original Greek word "idiotes" referred to people who might have had a high IQ, but were so self-involved that they focused exclusively on their own life and were both ignorant of and uncaring about public concerns and the common good.

When everybody does better, EVERYBODY does better.

Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.

If you can't be a populist in Arkansas, you ain't going to be a populist in Washington.

Even the smallest dog can lift its leg on the tallest building.

America's drug war is so stupid that if you pay close attention to just how stupid it is
it'll drive you to use drugs.

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people ... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie ... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us.

The real bias of the media is not to the left or to the right, but to the thin strata of economic elites at the top of our society.

When Rick Perry says I can do for America what I've done for Texas, pay attention. That's no idle threat.

Becoming a politician is the only step down I could take from being a journalist.

Well, I've been in the political arena all of my life, and 10 years of that as a candidate and elected official, and that's about enough.

But the good news is that out in the countryside, just about every place that's got a zip code has somebody or some group of people battling the economic and political exclusion that Wall Street and Washington are shoving down our throats.

Organic agriculture is more about fairness and respect than it is about parts-per-billion of pesticide residues

The media isn't only asleep; it doesn't want to know this news, that the people are revolting, in the very best sense of the term, revolting against the thieves in high places and reaching out to each other, which is our great strength.