Adlai Stevenson Quotations

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?

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

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

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House.

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

Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.

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.

There is no evil in the atom; only in men's souls.

Saskatchewan is much like Texas - except it's more friendly to the United States.

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.

The Republicans have a me too candidate running on a yes but platform, advised by a has been staff.

We live in an era of revolution, the revolution of rising expectations.

The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers.

We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution

I don't envy the driver and I don't think the American people will care to ride in his bus very far.

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.

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

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

It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.

Respect for intellectual excellence, the restoration of vigor and discipline to our ideas of study, curricula which aim at strengthening intellectual fiber and stretching the power of young minds, personal commitment and responsibility - these are th

When you leave here, don't forget why you came. ( to college graduates)

When you leave here, don't forget why you came.

Via ovicpitum dura est", or, for the benefit of the engineers among you: "The way of the egghead is hard

Men may be born free; they cannot be born wise; and it is the duty of the university to make the free wise.

Self-Criticism is the secret weapon of democracy, and candor and confession are good for the political soul.

Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy; but good administration can never save bad policy.

Eggheads, unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.

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

Man is a strange animal, he doesn't like to read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.

Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses.

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.

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.

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.

A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience, and many have been precipitated by reckless haste.

A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can.

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is no barking dog to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.

I have been told that one of the reasons the astronomers of the world cooperate is the fact that there is no one nation from which the entire sphere of the sky can be seen. Perhaps there is in that fact a parable for national statesmen, whose political horizons are all too often limited by national horizons.

[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.

A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble.

It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming.

An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.

Why is it that when political ammunition runs low, inevitably the rusty artillery of abuse is always wheeled into action?

An independent is the guy who wants to take the politics out of politics.

Your public servants serve you right; indeed often they serve you better than your apathy and indifference deserve.

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

Carelessness about our security is dangerous, carelessness about our freedom is also dangerous.

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.

A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular

A beauty is a woman you notice; A charmer is one who notices you. Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

Indeed there are some Republicans I would trust with anything - anything, that is, except public office

In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take.

In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes

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

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.