Adlai Stevenson II (1900–65) was an American politician and diplomat. Stevenson is renowned for his intellectual disposition, organizational skills, eloquent public speaking, and for advancing liberal ideologies within the Democratic Party.
Stevenson is also remembered for his significant landslide losses to popular war hero Dwight Eisenhower during both the 1952 and the 1956 presidential elections. Before the 1960 presidential election, Stevenson lost to Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy as the Democratic Party’s candidate. When Kennedy became president, Stevenson served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations until his death in 1965.
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Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Vision
Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.
—Adlai Stevenson
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
Topics: Knowledge
What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Aging, Age
You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Anger, Men
Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Politicians, Politics
It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
—Adlai Stevenson
Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Peace
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 Stevenson
Topics: Freedom
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.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Belief
We mean by “politics” the people’s business — the most important business there is.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Success, Politics
We have confused the free with the free and easy.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Freedom
She would rather light candles than curse the darkness and her glow has warmed the world.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Attitude
It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Life and Living
We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
—Adlai Stevenson
All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Progress, Originality
For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Forgiveness, Attitude, Ignorance
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.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Goals
Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice is hard.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Prejudice
The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Freedom
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 Stevenson
Topics: Elections
In youth, everything seems possible; but we reach a point in the middle years when we realize that we are never going to reach all the shining goals we had set for ourselves. And in the end, most of us reconcile ourselves, with what grace we can, to living with our ulcers and arthritis, our sense of partial failure, our less-than-ideal families—and even our politicians!
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Youth
The human race has improved everything, but the human race.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Civilization
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Words, Eating
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Patriotism, Dedication
A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Freedom, Society
Laws are never as effective as habits.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Habit
Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Power
We should be careful and discriminating in all the advice we give. We should be especially careful in giving advice that we would not think of following ourselves. Most of all, we ought to avoid giving counsel which we don’t follow when it damages those who take us at our word.
—Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Advice
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