Quotes by Michael Moore

“As the country continues to dissect the recent natural disaster, we might want to start considering what about the disaster wasnt actually natural at all. ... Human activity, the burning of fossil fuels, is causing global warming. Global warming is causing the oceans to warm. Warm oceans are steroids for storms.”

“I do not want my film being broadcast on the network unless it is willing to let its own workers back in to work and promises to bargain with them in good faith,”

“Theyre all getting a Christmas card from me this year,”

“Im going to spend my entire tax cut to help defeat you next year.”

“Theres a reason that theyre saying Kerry is the No. 1 liberal in the Senate, its because he is the No. 1 liberal in the Senate.”

[Bill] Clinton was a pretty good president for a Republican.

A government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom, morality, and humanity.

One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America -- and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply cant turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place.

...I have a theory about why and how all this has happened to you.Instead of having to earn it, you have been handed the presidency, the same way youve come by everything else in your life. Money and name alone have opened every door for you. Without effort or hard work or intelligence, or ingenuity, you have been bequeathed a life of privilege...So its no wonder you think you deserved to be named President. You didnt earn it or win it- therefore it must be yours!

It was the American middle class. No ones house cost more than two or three years salary, and I doubt the spread in annual wages (except for the osteopath) exceeded more than five thousand dollars. And other than the doctor (who made house calls), the store managers, the minister, the salesman, and the banker, everyone belonged to a union. That meant they worked a forty-hour week, had the entire weekend off (plus two to four weeks paid vacation in the summer), comprehensive medical benefits, and job security. In return for all that, the country became the most productive in the world and in our little neighborhood it meant your furnace was always working, your kids could be dropped off at the neighbors without notice, you could run next door anytime to borrow a half-dozen eggs, and the doors to all the homes were never locked -- because who would need to steal anything if they already had all that they needed?

How does paying people more money make you more money?It works like this. The more you pay your workers, the more they spend. Remember, theyre not just your workers- theyre your consumers, too. The more they spend their extra cash on your products, the more your profits go up. Also, when employees have enough money that they dont have to live in constant fear of bankruptcy, theyre able to focus more on their work- and be more productive. With fewer personal problems and less stress hanging over them, theyll lose less time at work, meaning more profits for you. Pay them enough to afford a late model car (i.e. one that works), and theyll rarely be late for work. And knowing that theyll be able to provide a better life for their children will not only give them a more positive attitude, itll give them hope- and an incentive to do well for the company because the better the company does, the better theyll do.Of course, if youre like most corporations these days- announcing mass layoffs right after posting record profits- then youre already hemorrhaging the trust and confidence of your remaining workforce, and your employees are doing their jobs in a state of fear. Productivity will drop. That will hurt sales. You will suffer. Ask the people at Firestone: Ford has alleged that the tire company fired its longtime union employees, then brought in untrained scab workers who ended up making thousands of defective tires- and 203 dead customers later, Firestone is in the toilet.

I realized that this was the big secret of democracy -- that change can occur by starting off with just a few people doing something.

Capitalism means that a few people will do very well, and the rest will serve the few.

For kids who are exposed to books at home, the loss of a library is sad. But for kids who come from environments where people dont read, the loss of a library is a tragedy hat might keep them from ever discovering the joys of reading-or from gathering the kind of information that will decide their lot in life.

The working people of the Flint area hated this rag, but it was our only daily so you read it. Everyone called it the Flint Urinal. Editorially, the paper had historically been on the wrong side of every major social and political issue of the twentieth century -- the wrong side meaning: whatever side the union workers were on, the Urinal took the opposite position.

What really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that whats good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was, Well build it and you buy it. Well tell you what to buy. You just buy it.

I respect the fact that people have worked hard all week and want to go to the movies on the weekend and be entertained.

Ive been encouraging documentary filmmakers to use more and more humor, and theyre loath to do that because they think if its a documentary it has to be deadly serious - it has to be like medicine that youre supposed to take. And I think its what keeps the mass audience from going to documentaries.

When the womens liberation movement began, when people began protesting against the Vietnam War, civil rights movement, at the beginning of those movements, the majority of the country was not with them, did not believe in the basic principles of any of those philosophies.

We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.