Top 100 Adlai Quotes
#1. In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases.
David Pietrusza
#2. (Adlai Stevenson once said to Richard Nixon: If you stop telling lies about me I'll stop telling the truth about you.
Christopher Hitchens
#3. A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick.
John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson
John Steinbeck
#4. When I was in the Army, I read a book by Adlai Stevenson. He said law was as noble as saving a person's life. So at one point, I felt that way too.
William Sanderson
#5. When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy
Jack Ruby
#6. Adlai Stevenson has a genius for saying the right thing, at the right time, to the wrong people.
Joe E. Lewis
#7. As kids, we traded 'I like Ike' and 'All the way with Adlai' buttons in elementary school.
Andrea Mitchell
#8. Aside from my son, no person has ever shown for me the gentle concern I knew from Governor Adlai Stevenson.
Mercedes McCambridge
#9. Technically, 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie' was a kids' show, but adults watched almost religiously - and we're talking adult adults, celebrated adults - including James Thurber, Orson Welles, John Steinbeck, Adlai E. Stevenson and lyricist Stephen Sondheim.
Tom Shales
#10. The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
(Adlai E. Stevenson, 1900-1965, American Lawyer, Politician)
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#12. Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#13. In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.
Adlai Stevenson
#14. It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming.
Adlai Stevenson I
#15. A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience, and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.
Adlai Stevenson I
#17. 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
#18. Speaking as a Christian, I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the apostle Peale appalling.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#19. Men may be born free; they cannot be born wise; and it is the duty of the university to make the free wise.
Adlai Stevenson I
#21. We mean by 'politics' the people's business - the most important business there is.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#22. Carelessness about our security is dangerous, carelessness about our freedom is also dangerous.
Adlai Stevenson I
#23. A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#25. It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#26. Our strength lies, not alone in our proving grounds and our stockpiles, but in our ideals, our goals, and their universal appeal to all men who are struggling to breathe free.
Adlai Stevenson I
#27. Man is a strange animal, he doesn't like to read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#28. With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?
Adlai Stevenson
#29. 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
#30. Why is it that when political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is always wheeled into action?
Adlai Stevenson I
#31. Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood and then mount the stump to make a speech for conservation.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson
#32. 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
#33. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy; but good administration can never save bad policy.
Adlai Stevenson I
#35. The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#37. A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.
Adlai Stevenson I
#38. My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#39. We live in an era of revolution, the revolution of rising expectations.
Adlai Stevenson
#40. We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#41. Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#42. 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
#43. Self-Criticism is the secret weapon of democracy, and candor and confession are good for the political soul.
Adlai Stevenson I
#45. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.
Adlai Stevenson I
#46. What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#48. Here, in the dread tribunal of last resort, valor contended against valor. Here brave men struggled and died for the right as God gave them to see the right.
Adlai Stevenson I
#50. 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
#51. You know, you really can't beat a household commodity - the ketchup bottle on the kitchen table.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#52. She was the kind of person who would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#53. After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquility of a political convention.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#54. 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
#56. If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#57. 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
#58. The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
Adlai Stevenson I
#59. Saskatchewan is much like Texas - except it's more friendly to the United States.
Adlai Stevenson
#60. Law is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#61. There is a spiritual hunger in the world today - and it cannot be satisfied by better cars on longer credit terms.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#62. 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
#64. An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#65. 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
#66. There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#71. It is often easier to fight for one's principles than it is to live up to them.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#72. Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#74. 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
#76. 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
#78. An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#81. Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#82. [I]t is difficult to picture the great Creator conceiving of a program of one creature (which He has made) using another living creature for purposes of experimentation. There must be other, less cruel ways of obtaining knowledge.
Adlai Stevenson I
#83. Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#84. To me, there is something superbly symbolic in the fact that an astronaut, sent up as assistant to a series of computers, found that he worked more accurately and more intelligently than they. Inside the capsule, man is still in charge.
Adlai Stevenson
#85. Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#86. She would rather light candles than curse the darkness and her glow has warmed the world.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
#87. We cannot be any stronger in our foreign policy for all the bombs and guns we may heap up in our arsenals than we are in the spirit which rules inside the country. Foreign policy, like a river, cannot rise above its source.
Adlai Stevenson
#90. Selling the presidency like cereal! How can you talk seriously about issues with half-minute spots?
Adlai Ewing Stevenson
#91. Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.
Adlai E. Stevenson
#93. 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
#94. Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses.
Adlai Stevenson I
#96. 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
#97. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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.
Adlai Stevenson
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