Adlai e. stevenson quotes

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

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

Nature is neutral. Man has wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert or make the deserts bloom. There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.

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

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

And all our troubles, all our immense difficulties, now and in the future, can I say, be solved if we have the will, the courage, the boldness to face them, face them square.

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

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

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

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

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.

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

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

Protocol, alcohol, and Geritol.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

He who slings mud generally loses ground.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

A hungry man is not a free man.

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.

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

There is a New America every morning when we wake up. It is upon us whether we will it or not.

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.

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

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

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

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.

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

Freedom rings where opinions clash.

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. All change is the result of a change in the contemporary state of mind.

Someone asked me...how it felt and I was reminded of a story that a fellow townsman of ours used to tell--Abraham Lincoln. They asked him how he felt once after an unsuccessful election. He said he felt like a little boy who had stubbed his toe in the dark. He said that he was too old to cry, but it hurt too much to laugh.

She was the kind of person who would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.