Adlai E. Stevenson Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Laws are never as effective as habits. — Adlai E. Stevenson

He who slings mud generally loses ground. — Adlai E. Stevenson

Protocol, alcohol, and Geritol — Adlai E. Stevenson

A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you. — Adlai E. Stevenson

Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age. — Adlai E. Stevenson

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

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

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

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

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

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

On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers. — Adlai E. Stevenson

I don't want to send them to jail. I want to send them to school. — Adlai E. Stevenson

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth. — Adlai E. Stevenson

Making peace is harder than making war. — Adlai E. Stevenson

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse. — Adlai E. Stevenson

Freedom rings where opinions clash. — 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

We mean by 'politics' the people's business - the most important business there is. — Adlai E. Stevenson

Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale. — Adlai E. Stevenson

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

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

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

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

Nature is neutral. — 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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans. — Adlai E. Stevenson

We have confused the free with the free and easy. — Adlai E. Stevenson

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

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

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice. — Adlai E. Stevenson

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end. — Adlai E. Stevenson

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts. — Adlai E. Stevenson

The human race has improved everything, but the human race. — Adlai E. Stevenson

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

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

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

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

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard. — 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