Adlai E. Stevenson Quotes (72 Quotes)

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

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

A hungry man is not a free man.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.

In quiet places, reason abounds.

He who slings mud generally loses ground.

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

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

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

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.

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

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Saskatchewan is much like Texas- except it's more friendly to the United States.

Making peace is harder than making war.

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than the freedom to stagnate.

Laws are never as effective as habits.

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

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

The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nature is neutral.