Adlai Stevenson II Quotes

130 Sourced Quotes

The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism.

Adlai Stevenson II
I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.

Adlai Stevenson II
I have said what I meant and meant what I said. I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best, frankly and forthrightly; no man can do more, and you are entitled to no less.

Adlai Stevenson II
Kansas, by reason of history and location at the heart of our continental power, is a kind of social, political, and cultural barometer for all America.

Adlai Stevenson II
The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.

Adlai Stevenson II
It is an ancient political vehicle, held together by soft soap and hunger and with front-seat drivers and back-seat drivers contradicting each other in a bedlam of voices, shouting "go right" and "go left" at the same time.

Adlai Stevenson II
There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.

Adlai Stevenson II
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 II
We must be patient—making peace is harder than making war.

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

Adlai Stevenson II
In the tragic days of Mussolini, the trains in Italy ran on time as never before and I am told in their way, their horrible way, that the Nazi concentration-camp system in Germany was a model of horrible efficiency. The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy.

Adlai Stevenson II
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal chords.

Adlai Stevenson II
The rock-bottom foundation of a free press is the integrity of the people who run it. Our press may make a million mistakes without doing itself permanent harm so long as its proprietors are steadfast in their adherence to truth.

Adlai Stevenson II
Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

Adlai Stevenson II
Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.

Adlai Stevenson II
The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor.

Adlai Stevenson II
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.

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

Adlai Stevenson II
An independent is a guy who wants to take the politics out of politics.

Adlai Stevenson II
A diplomat's life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol.

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

Adlai Stevenson II
What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.

Adlai Stevenson II
The kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, and then mount the stump and make a speech on conservation.
Of Richard Nixon

Adlai Stevenson II
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 Stevenson II
The Republican party did not have to…encourage the excesses of its Vice-Presidential nominee [Richard Nixon]—the young man who asks you to set him one heart-beat from the Presidency of the United States.

Adlai Stevenson II
You have taught me a lesson I should have learned long ago—to take counsel always of your courage and never of your fears.

Adlai Stevenson II
I suppose flattery hurts no one, that is, if he doesn't inhale.

Adlai Stevenson II
I have finally figured out what the Republican orators mean by what they call "moderate progressivism." All they mean is: "Don't just do something, Stand there."

Adlai Stevenson II