Adlai E. Stevenson Quotes

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

A hungry man is not a free man.

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

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

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

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.

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.

He who slings mud generally loses ground.

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.

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.

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.

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

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Freedom rings where opinions clash.

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.

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

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

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.

Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.

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

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.

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.