Quotes from Adlai E. Stevenson

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

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.

A beauty is a woman you notice a charmer is one who notices you.

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.

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.

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.

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

An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics.

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

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.

I sometimes marvel at the extraordinary docility with which Americans submit to speeches.

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.

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.

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.

The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation who 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, and even bird versus worm…. The State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency.

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.

The free press is the mother of all our liberties and of our progress under liberty.

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

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

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.

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

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

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.

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.