Quotes by Adlai Stevenson

• The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.
• 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.
• The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
• The human race has improved everything, but the human race.
• The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
• The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
• 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.
• That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.
• Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.
• Saskatchewan is much like Texas- except it's more friendly to the United States.
• Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
• We mean by "politics" the people's business - the most important business there is.
• There is a spiritual hunger in the world today - and it cannot be satisfied by better cars on longer credit terms.
• You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
• We have confused the free with the free and easy.
• Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
• There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
• What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.
• The relationship of the toastmaster to speaker should be the same as that of the fan to the fan dancer. It should call attention to the subject without making any particular effort to cover it.
• We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
• 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.
• To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man - and also a nation.
• 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.
• Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of Heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don't forget when you leave why you came.
• You know, you really can't beat a household commodity - the ketchup bottle on the kitchen table.
• The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations - great or small - to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.
• The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers.
• Making peace is harder than making war.
• Laws are never as effective as habits.
• Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.
• In America any boy may become President and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.
• In quiet places, reason abounds.
• It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.
• It will be helpful in our mutual objective to allow every man in America to look his neighbor in the face and see a man-not a color.
• It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
• Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
• Law is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.
• Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
• Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
• Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.
• Nature is neutral.
• Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.
• Nixon is finding out there are no tails on an Eisenhower jacket.
• Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.
• 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.
• On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.
• Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.
• Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
• 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.
• Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.
• If the Republicans will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
• Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity - in short, of tyranny - and it is committed to making tyranny universal.
• Do you know the difference between a beautiful woman and a charming one? A beauty is a woman you notice, a charmer is one who notices you.
• Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
• Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale.
• Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than the freedom to stagnate.
• Freedom rings where opinions clash.
• I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
• An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.
• I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
• I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly.
• I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign... and this has sometimes been a lonely road, because I never meet anybody coming the other way.
• I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
• I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school.
• He who slings mud generally loses ground.
• A hungry man is not a free man.
• Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.
• As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
• A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
• A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.
• A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
• Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
• After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.
• All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
• An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
• A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.
• Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
• In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes!
• Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.
• Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.
• The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal that you can gather votes like box tops is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
• I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
• A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House.
• There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.
• A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
• The Republicans have a me too candidate running on a yes but platform, advised by a has been staff.
• We live in an era of revolution, the revolution of rising expectations.
• With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?
• We cannot be any stronger in our foreign policy for all the bombs and guns we may heap up in our arsenals than we are in the spirit which rules inside the country. Foreign policy, like a river, cannot rise above its source.
• To me, there is something superbly symbolic in the fact that an astronaut, sent up as assistant to a series of computers, found that he worked more accurately and more intelligently than they. Inside the capsule, man is still in charge.