You should not allow yourself the luxuries of discouragement of despair. Bounce back immediately, and welcome the adversity because it produces harder thinking and harder drive to get to the objective.
Like sex in Victorian England, the reality of Big Business today is our big dirty secret.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the hidden and often uncomfortable truths about big business in society, akin to the taboo nature of sex in Victorian England.
Ralph Nader's quote draws a parallel between the societal repression of discussing sex in Victorian England and the contemporary reluctance to openly confront the imperfections and ethical dilemmas associated with big business. It suggests that many aspects of corporate life are obscured from public view, hinting at a collective awareness of these issues but a hesitance to engage with them directly.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on corporate ethics, you might say, 'As Ralph Nader pointed out, our understanding of big business often hides painful truths, much like the secrets of Victorian society.'
More from Ralph Nader
All quotes βI once said to my father, when I was a boy, 'Dad we need a third political party.' He said to me, 'I'll settle for a second.'
Power concedes nothing without a demand. The struggle for justice must never be adjourned. The forces of injustice do not take vacations.
The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers.
We have the most prolonged adolescence in the history of mankind. There is no other society that requires so many years to pass before people are grown up ... Adolescence is nurtured and prolonged by educational processes and by industry that has found a bonanza in embracing the adolescent population and fortifying 'adolescent values.' This prolongation of adolescence robs the country of the population group having the most risk takers, and the highest ideals.
Moral courage is the highest expression of humanity.
Similar quotes
The accusation is always on the first page, and the retraction on page 19.
Those whose thinking is disciplined by science, like all others, need a basis for the good life, for aspiration, for courage to do great deeds. They need a faith to live by. The hope of the world lies in those who have such faith and who use the methods of science to make their visions become real. Such visions and hope and faith are not a part of science.
Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.
If the genius of invention were to reveal to-morrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought.
It would be so much better if we could share our insecurity, if we could all venture inside ourselves and realize that green beans and vitamin C, however much they nurture us, cannot save lives, or sustain our souls.
And certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we are so fond of it.