Quotes By Adlai E. Stevenson

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.

After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquility of a political convention.

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.

To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man - and also a nation.

It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.

Your days are short here; this is the last of your springs. And now in the serenity and quiet of this lovely place, touch the depths of truth, feel the hem of Heaven. You will go away with old, good friends. And don't forget when you leave why you came.

The relationship of the toastmaster to 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.

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.

We have confused the free with the free and easy.

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.

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.

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

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

Law is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.

You know, you really can't beat a household commodity - the ketchup bottle on the kitchen table.

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.

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.

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

I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly.

On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died.

Making peace is harder than making war.

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

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

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

You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.

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.

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

Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.

He who slings mud generally loses ground.

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.