Top 50 Jim Hightower Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Jim Hightower

2. “When everybody does better, EVERYBODY does better.”

— Jim Hightower

3. “Even a dead fish can go with the flow.”

— Jim Hightower

4. “The water won’t clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek.”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

7. “If you don’t speak out when it matters, when would it matter to speak out?”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

10. “Politics isn’t about left versus right; it’s about top versus bottom.”

— Jim Hightower

11. “If ignorance goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drilling rights to George Bush’s head.”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

13. “Do something. If it doesn’t work, do something else. No idea is too crazy.”

— Jim Hightower

14. “The issue isn’t just jobs. Even slaves had jobs. The issue is wages.”

— Jim Hightower

15. “You have to learn to read between the lies.”

— Jim Hightower

16. “Good wages are pro business, since they reduce turnover, increase morale, produce better-skilled employees, and improve productivity.”

— Jim Hightower

17. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

19. “Banks don’t commit crimes. Bankers do. And they won’t ever stop if they don’t have to pay for their crimes.”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

21. “Some of these rich folks seem to think that everything belongs to them and they’ll even get to take it with them when they die. But you know what? You don’t ever see a hearse pulling a U Haul.”

— Jim Hightower

22. “It’s an essential fight librarians are making, an age-old fight; yours is a battle for civilization. It’s a fight for our country’s founding values.”

— Jim Hightower

23. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

24. “It may be the rooster that does all the crowing but it’s the hen that delivers the goods.”

— Jim Hightower

25. “It’s hard for the donkeys to win the race if they’re going to carry the elephants on their backs.”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

27. “The corporations don’t have to lobby the government anymore. They are the government.”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

29. “The only difference between a pigeon and the American farmer today is that a pigeon can still make a deposit on a John Deere.”

— Jim Hightower

30. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

31. “We’ve got to go to the people with bold ideas and candidates of conviction – we’ve got to be hotter than high school love.”

— Jim Hightower

32. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

33. “If it’s dangerous to talk to yourself, it’s probably even dicier to listen.”

— Jim Hightower

34. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

35. “It’s hard to believe President George Bush gave a speech in New Orleans about disaster recovery and failed to mention the word ‘farm’ or the word ‘rural.’”

— Jim Hightower

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

— Jim Hightower

37. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

38. “There’s enormous progressive activism and, more often than not, success at the grassroots level – everything from living wage campaigns to efforts to finance our elections are having terrific success.”

— Jim Hightower

39. “Ronald Reagan’s idea of a good farm program was Hee Haw.”

— Jim Hightower

40. “America was not built by conformists, but by mutineers.”

— Jim Hightower

41. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

42. “Republicans are so empty-headed, they wouldn’t make a good landfill.”

— Jim Hightower

43. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

44. “What’s new is that the White House itself has now been corporatized. It’s not politicians working for the corporate interests. They are the corporate interests. That’s where Bush came from, and Cheney and Rumsfeld.”

— Jim Hightower

45. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

46. “The good news, though, is that I find in my political travels that people, as regular citizens, are more interested than ever in getting together and having discussions. They want to hear about other viewpoints that differ entirely from what the administration is putting out.”

— Jim Hightower

47. “Politics ought to be fun. It shouldn’t be just boring meetings.”

— Jim Hightower

Featured in: Fun Quotes

48. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

49. “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.”

— Jim Hightower

50. “This is a matter of public health. The public was sick and tired of DeLay and his corruption.”

— Jim Hightower