Adlai E. Stevenson Quotes

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“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.”

— Adlai E. 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 E. Stevenson

“A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.”

— Adlai E. 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.

— Adlai E. 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 E. Stevenson

“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.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Nixon is finding out there are no tails on an Eisenhower jacket.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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.

— Adlai E. 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 E. Stevenson

“Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“You know, you really can't beat a household commodity - the ketchup bottle on the kitchen table.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“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.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Freedom rings where opinions clash.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.”

— Adlai E. 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 E. Stevenson

“Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.”

— Adlai E. 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 E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“We have confused the free with the free and easy.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Making peace is harder than making war.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquility of a political convention.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Laws are never as effective as habits.”

— Adlai E. 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 E. Stevenson

“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.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“He who slings mud generally loses ground.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Law is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“The human race has improved everything, but the human race.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“There is a spiritual hunger in the world today - and it cannot be satisfied by better cars on longer credit terms.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal. For, in the vernacular, we Americans are suckers for good news.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Protocol, alcohol, and Geritol

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“Not to destroy but to construct,
I hold the unconquerable belief
that science and peace will triumph over ignorance and war
that nations will come together
not to destroy but to construct
and that the future belongs to those
who accomplish most for humanity.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson

The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

“The university is the archive of the Western mind, it's the keeper of the Western culture, ... the guardian of our heritage, the teacher of our teachers, ... the dwelling place of the free mind.”

— Adlai E. Stevenson