Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

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

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

A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Flattery is all right if you don't inhale.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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 E. Stevenson

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

A hungry man is not a free man.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Golf is a fine relief from the tensions of office, but we are a little tired of holding the bag.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Laws are never as effective as habits.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!

— Adlai E. Stevenson

What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

I sometimes marvel at the extraordinary docility with which Americans submit to speeches.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

The relationship of the toastmaster to the speaker should be the same as that of the fan to the fan dancer. It should call attention to the subject without making any particular effort to cover it.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

I would rather be guilty of talking over a person's head than behind his back.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson

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

— Adlai E. Stevenson