Stevenson, Adlai (Adlai Stevenson)

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than the freedom to stagnate.
-- Adlai Stevenson

I believe that if we really want human brotherhood to spread and increase until it makes life safe and sane, we must also be certain that there is no one true faith or path by which it may spread.
-- Adlai Stevenson

I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self. The significance of a smaller world will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph of the heartbeat over the drumbeat.
-- Adlai Stevenson

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson

We live in an era of revolution
-- Adlai Stevenson

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
-- Adlai Stevenson

A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.
-- Adlai Stevenson

A hungry man is not a free man.
-- Adlai Stevenson

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
-- Adlai Stevenson

A wise man does not try to hurry history.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
-- Adlai Stevenson

After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquility of a political convention.
-- Adlai Stevenson

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
-- Adlai Stevenson

An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Anecdote: During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to him, "You have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson called back, "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"
-- Adlai Stevenson

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Freedom rings where opinions clash.
-- Adlai Stevenson

He who slings mud generally loses ground.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.
-- Adlai Stevenson

In quiet places, reason abounds.
-- Adlai Stevenson

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.
-- Adlai Stevenson

It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Law is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Laws are never as effective as habits.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.
-- Adlai Stevenson

On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died. (it ain't over till it's over)
-- Adlai Stevenson

On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.
-- Adlai Stevenson

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.
-- Adlai Stevenson

The art of government has grown from its seeds in the tiny city-states of Greece to become the political mode of half the world. So let us dream of a world in which all states, great and small, work together for the peaceful flowering of the republic of man.
-- Adlai Stevenson

The human race has improved everything, but the human race.
-- Adlai Stevenson

The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach, however small.
-- Adlai Stevenson

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.
-- Adlai Stevenson

The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations great or small
-- Adlai Stevenson

There are worse things than losing an election; the worst thing is to lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth.
-- Adlai Stevenson

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
-- Adlai Stevenson

To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man- and also a nation.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.
-- Adlai Stevenson

Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.
-- Adlai Stevenson

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
-- Adlai Stevenson

We have confused the free with the free and easy.
-- Adlai Stevenson

We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution
-- Adlai Stevenson

We mean by "politics" the people's business
-- Adlai Stevenson

We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.
-- Adlai Stevenson

We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments.
-- Adlai Stevenson

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on it's vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to it's security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft.
-- Adlai Stevenson

What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.
-- Adlai Stevenson

You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
-- Adlai Stevenson

The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.
-- Adlai Stevenson

What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose.
-- Adlai Stevenson