Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

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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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 Stevenson
Topics: Voting, Elections

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Communism, Socialism

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, Prophecy

For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Attitude, Ignorance, Forgiveness

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 Stevenson
Topics: Patriotism

A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Politicians, Politics

Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Survival

A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Society, Freedom

You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Men, Anger

Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Peace

The central question is whether the wonderfully diverse and gifted assemblage of human beings on this earth really knows how to run a civilization.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Civilization

Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Politicians, Politics

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Power

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Patriotism, Dedication

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

I sometimes marvel at the extraordinary docility with which Americans submit to speeches.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Speakers, Speaking

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 Stevenson
Topics: Help, Cooperation, Earth

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

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 Stevenson
Topics: Nationalism, Nation, Nationality

The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Revolution

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

A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Control

When you leave here, don’t forget why you came.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Graduation

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

Under the wide and starry sky. Dig the grave and let me lie.
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

I would rather be guilty of talking over a person’s head than behind his back.
Adlai Stevenson
Topics: Speakers, Speaking

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

I believe that if we really want human brotherhood to spread and increase until it makes life safe and sane, we must also be certain that there is no one true faith or path by which it may spread. But it is not easy to banish the notion that there can be universal brotherhood just as soon as everybody gives up his faith and accepts ours. That day may never come, for the richness of human diversity cannot be abolished any more than Mars or Jupiter. Difference is the nature of life, it is part of our moral Universe. Without difference, life would become lifeless.
Adlai Stevenson

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

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