Adlai Stevenson II

I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.

— Adlai Stevenson II

The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.

— Adlai Stevenson II

True Patriotism, it seems to me, is based on tolerance and a large measure of humility.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, "How well he spoke"; but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, "Let us march."

— Adlai Stevenson II

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Laws are never as effective as habits.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

A hungry man is not a free man.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

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.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 Stevenson II

In the tragic days of Mussolini, the trains in Italy ran on time as never before and I am told in their way, their horrible way, that the Nazi concentration-camp system in Germany was a model of horrible efficiency. The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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.

— Adlai Stevenson II

There is no evil in the atom, only in men's souls.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

To remember the loneliness, the fear and the insecurity of men who once had to walk alone in huge factories, beside huge machines—to realize that labor unions have meant new dignity and pride to millions of our countrymen—human companionship on the job, and music in the home—to be able to see what larger pay checks mean, not to a man as an employee, but as a husband and as a father—to know these things is to understand what American labor means.

— Adlai Stevenson II

In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.

— Adlai Stevenson II

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end. Democracy is a high privilege, but it is also a heavy responsibility whose shadow stalks, although you may never walk in the sun.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.

— Adlai Stevenson II

The Republicans have a "me too" candidate running on a "yes but" platform, advised by a "has been" staff.

— Adlai Stevenson II

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.

— Adlai Stevenson II

I have said what I meant and meant what I said. I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best, frankly and forthrightly; no man can do more, and you are entitled to no less.

— Adlai Stevenson II

It is an ancient political vehicle, held together by soft soap and hunger and with front-seat drivers and back-seat drivers contradicting each other in a bedlam of voices, shouting "go right" and "go left" at the same time.

— Adlai Stevenson II

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House...

— Adlai Stevenson II

A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign... But, strangely enough, my friends, this road has been a lonely road because I never meet anybody coming the other way.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Well, speaking as a Christian, I would like to say that I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling.

— Adlai Stevenson II

The Republican party makes even its young men seem old; the Democratic Party makes even its old men seem young.

— Adlai Stevenson II

He who slings mud generally loses ground.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. Thinking implies disagreement; and disagreement implies nonconformity; and nonconformity implies heresy; and heresy implies disloyalty—so, obviously, thinking must be stopped. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.

— Adlai Stevenson II

In matters of national security emotion is no substitute for intelligence, nor rigidity for prudence. To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man — and also a nation.

— Adlai Stevenson II

We mean by "politics" the people's business — the most important business there is.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses … yet we are all children of the same Judaic-Christian civilization, with much the same religious background basically.

— Adlai Stevenson II

We hear the Secretary of State boasting of his brinkmanship — the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 Stevenson II

There is a new America every morning when we wake up. It is upon us whether we will it or not. The new America is the sum of many small changes — a new subdivision here, a new school there, a new industry where there had been swampland — changes that add up to a broad transformation of our lives. Our task is to guide these changes. For, though change is inevitable, change for the better is a full-time job.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say to you that it is not America.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 Stevenson II

I have learned that In quiet places, reason abounds, that in quiet people there is vision and purpose, that many things are revealed to the humble that are hidden from the great.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Fill the moral vacuum, the rational vacuum, we must; reconvert a population soaked in the spirit of materialism to the spirit of humanism we must, or bit by bit we too will take on the visage of our enemy, the neo-heathens.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Men may be born free; they cannot be born wise; and it is the duty of the university to make the free wise.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution, and the powers of the atom are about to be harnessed for ever greater production. We live at a time when even the ancient spectre of hunger is vanishing. This is the age of abundance! Never in history has there been such an opportunity to show what we can do to improve the quality of living now that the old, terrible, grinding anxieties of daily bread, of shelter and raiment are disappearing.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 II

Respect for intellectual excellence, the restoration of vigor and discipline to our ideas of study, curricula which aim at strengthening intellectual fiber and stretching the power of young minds, personal commitment and responsibility — these are the preconditions of educational recovery in America today; and, I believe, they have always been the preconditions of happiness and sanity for the human race.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 Stevenson II

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.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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?

— Adlai Stevenson II

The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor.

— Adlai Stevenson II

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Happily for us, students have not tried to overthrow the Government of the United States, but they certainly are making their views felt in public affairs. I think especially of the participation of American students in the great struggle to advance civil and human rights in America. Indeed, even a jail sentence is no longer a dishonor but a proud achievement.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 Stevenson II

For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

She thought of herself as an ugly duckling, but she walked in beauty in the ghettos of the world, bringing with her the reminder of her beloved St. Francis, "It is in the giving that we receive." And wherever she walked beauty was forever there.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.

— Adlai Stevenson II

The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

The great aristocrat, the beloved leader, the profound historian, the gifted painter, the superb politician, the lord of language, the orator, the wit—yes, and the dedicated bricklayer—behind all of them was a simple man of faith, steadfast in defeat, generous in victory, resigned in age, trusting in a loving providence, and committing his achievements and his triumphs to a higher power.

— Adlai Stevenson II

A diplomat's life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol.

— Adlai Stevenson II

On this shrunken globe men can no longer live as strangers. Men can war against each other as hostile neighbors, as we are determined not to do; or they can co-exist in frigid isolation, as we are doing. But our prayer is that men everywhere will learn, finally, to live as brothers, to respect each other's differences, to heal each other's wounds, to promote each other's progress, and to benefit from each other's knowledge.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Because we believe in the free mind we are also fighting those who, in the name of anti-Communism, would assail the community of freedom itself.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 II

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 II

I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 II

I can't say that I love it with a fierce passion — indeed as a profession it's rather disappointing since it is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

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

— Adlai Stevenson II

Never run against a war hero.

— Adlai Stevenson II

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 Stevenson II

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.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Whenever I hear one of these old guard leaders on the other side talking about cutting taxes, when he knows it means weakening the nation, I always think of that story about the tired old capitalist who was driving alone in his car one day, and finally, he said "James, drive over the bluff; I want to commit suicide."

— Adlai Stevenson II

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice dies hard.

— Adlai Stevenson II

I have sometimes said that flattery is all right, Mr. President, if you don't inhale it.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Some war hero is always getting in my way.

— Adlai Stevenson II

Gentlemen, there is business before your house and I propose to get right to it, obeying, as far as I can, what seems to me becoming to be known as the Republican law of gravity.

— Adlai Stevenson II