Adlai Stevenson I Quotes

Adlai Stevenson I(Politician)

 

(source : wikipedia)

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

A hungry man is not a free man.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

He who slings mud generally loses ground.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

 

 

 

The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Making peace is harder than making war.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Nature is neutral.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Freedom rings where opinions clash.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

In quiet places, reason abounds.

 

 

 

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Laws are never as effective as habits.

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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