Adlai Stevenson II - Free Quotes

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

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

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
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
A free society means a society based on free competition and there is no more important competition than competition in ideas, competition in opinion. This form of competition is essential to the preservation of a free press.

Adlai Stevenson II
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. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave — to the ancient enemies of man — half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

Adlai Stevenson II
The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats.

Adlai Stevenson II
Because we believe in the free mind we are also fighting those who, in the name of anti-Communism, would assail the community of freedom itself.

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

Adlai Stevenson II