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Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Ewing Stevenson II (5 February 1900–14 July 1965) American politician and statesman, noted for his skill in debate and oratory; Governor of Illinois, he was twice an unsuccessful candidate for President of the United States running against Dwight D. Eisenhower (in 1952 and 1956).
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- The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation why knows but what we may be called upon to take sides as well in the age old problems of dog versus cat, bird versus bird, or even bird versus worm. In my opinion, the State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency.
For these reasons, and not because I love birds the less or cats the more, I veto and withhold my approval from Senate Bill No. 93.
- Vetoing a Bill that would have imposed fines on owners who allowed cats to run at large. (23 April 1949)
- 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.
- Voicing opposition to the Internal Security Act of 1950
- 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.
- Speech during 1952 Presidential campaign
- The Republican party makes even its young men seem old; the Democratic Party makes even its old men seem young.
- Comparing Richard Nixon to Alben Barkley during the 1952 presidential race, as quoted in Richard Nixon: A Political and Personal Portrait by Earl Mazo (1959) Chapter 7
- Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one.
- Speech to Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois. (21 July 1952)
- Let’s face it. Let’s talk sense to the American people. Let’s tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions.
- Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (26 July 1952)
- We talk a great deal about patriotism. 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 which will enable America to remain master of her power— to walk with it in serenity and wisdom, with self-respect and the respect of all mankind; a patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. The dedication of a lifetime— these are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.
- Speech to the American Legion Convention in New York City (27 August 1952)
- It was always accounted a virtue in a man to love his country. With us it is now something more than a virtue. It is a necessity. When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
- Speech to the American Legion Convention in New York City (27 August 1952)
- 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.
- Speech in New York City (28 August 1952)
- There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.
- Speech in Hartford, Connecticut (18 September 1952)
- In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes.
- Speech in Indianapolis, Indiana (26 September 1952)
- My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
- Speech in Detroit, Michigan (7 October 1952)
- Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.
- Speech at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (8 October 1952)
- 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.
- Speech at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (8 October 1952)
- I do not believe it is man's destiny to compress this once boundless earth into a small neighborhood, the better to destroy it. Nor do I believe it is in the nature of man to strike eternally at the image of himself, and therefore of God. I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self. The significance of a smaller world will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph of the heartbeat over the drumbeat.
These are my beliefs and I hold them deeply, but they would be without any inner meaning for me unless I felt that they were also the deep beliefs of human beings everywhere. And the proof of this, to my mind, is the very existence of the United Nations.
- (Speech in Springfield Illinois (24 October 1952)
- The early years of the United Nations have been difficult ones, but what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings?
Any great institution or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth. We will not lose faith in the United Nations. We see it as a living thing and we will work and pray for its full growth and development. We want it to become what it was intended to be— a world society of nations under law, not merely law backed by force, but law backed by justice and popular consent.
- (Speech in Springfield Illinois (24 October 1952)
- A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House...
- Speech in Washington D.C. (13 December 1952)
- We live in an era of revolution— the revolution of rising expectations.
- All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
- Speech at Princeton University (22 March 1954)
- We mean by "politics" the people’s business— the most important business there is.
- Speech in Chicago, Illinois (19 November 1955)
- We hear the Secretary of State boasting of his brinkmanship— the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss.
- Speech in Hartford, Connecticut (25 February 1956); Referring to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
- 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.
- Speech at the Democratic National Convention (18 August 1956)
- You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal. For, in the vernacular, we Americans are suckers for good news.
- Commencement address at Michigan State University The New York Times (9 June 1958)
- 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.
- "Putting First Things First", Foreign Affairs (January 1960)
- 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?
- The Wall Street Journal (1 June 1960)
- The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
- The New York Times (19 January 1962)
- She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.
- Remark upon learning of the death of Eleanor Roosevelt, drawing upon the motto of the Christopher Society: "It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness." ; quoted in The New York Times (8 November 1962)
- * You are in the courtroom of world opinion…. All right, sir, let me ask you one simple question: Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no— don’t wait for the translation— yes or no?" [The Soviet representative refuses to answer.] "You can answer yes or no. You have denied they exist. I want to know if I understood you correctly. I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that’s your decision. And I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room.
- To Soviet U.N. Ambassador Valerian A. Zorin in the United Nations Security Council during the Cuban missile crisis (25 October 1962)
- For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
- Response to a heckler asking him to state his beliefs. Time (1 November 1963)
- A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
- Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964)
- Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.
- Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964)
- The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.
- Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964); this statement is derived from one by humorist Don Marquis.
- An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
- Quoted in The Fine Art of Political Wit by Leon Harris (1964); This statement has also been attributed to Elbert Hubbard
Attributed
- A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.
- A diplomat's life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol.
- A hungry man is not a free man.
- A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
- A wise man does not try to hurry history.
- Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
- After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.
- All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
- An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
- An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.
- Anecdote: During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to him, "You have the vote of every thinking person!" Stevenson called back, "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"
- Anecdote: Stevenson arrived late to a speaking engagement because a military parade blocked traffic, upon arriving, he proclaimed: "This not the first time a war hero has gotten in my way..."
- Anecdote: When asked on a television show if he had any advice to give to young politicians, he replied: "Yes, never run against a war hero."
- As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
- Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.
- Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.
- 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.
- Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
- Flattery is all right so long as you don't inhale.
- Freedom rings where opinions clash.
- He who slings mud generally loses ground.
- 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 refuse to personally criticize President Eisenhower, I will not submit to the Republican concept of gravity.
- I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly.
- 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.
- Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.
- In quiet places, reason abounds.
- 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.
- It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.
- 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.
- It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
- Law is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop.
- Laws are never as effective as habits.
- Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
- Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it.
- Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.
- 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. (it ain't over till it's over)
- On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.
- Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
- 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.
- 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 the preconditions of educational recovery in America today; and, I believe, they have always been the preconditions of happiness and sanity for the human race.
- Saskatchewan is much like Texas- except it's more friendly to the United States
- She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world. (speaking about Eleanor Roosevelt)
- Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses.
- Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.
- That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.
- Variant: That which seems to be the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.
- The art of government has grown from its seeds in the tiny city-states of Greece to become the political mode of half the world. So let us dream of a world in which all states, great and small, work together for the peaceful flowering of the republic of man.
- The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day.
- 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. ** Comment on the Republican symbol.
- The human race has improved everything, but the human race.
- The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach, however small.
- The Republicans have a "me too" candidate running on a "yes but" platform, advised by a "has been" staff.
- The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.
- 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.
- There are worse things than losing an election; the worst thing is to lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth.
- Responding to an assertion that his support for a ban on nuclear testing would probably cost him votes.
- There is a New America every morning when we wake up. It is upon us whether we will it or not.
- There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
- Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
- To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man- and also a nation.
- Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.
- Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.
- We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
- We have confused the free with the free and easy.
- We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution
- We mean by "politics" the people's business— the most important business there is.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.
- What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand.
- You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
Quotes of others about Stevenson
- He had that quality for which the Africans . . . have found a special term . . . 'Nommo'. . . the Bantu word for the gift of making life rather larger and more vivid for everyone else. ~ Barbara Ward, British economist.
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