Adlai Stevenson II Quotes

I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity.

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.

There are worse things than losing an election; the worst thing is to lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth.

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

Because we believe in the free mind we are also fighting those who, in the name of anti-Communism, would assail the community of freedom itself.

On this shrunken globe men can no longer live as strangers. Men can war against each other as hostile neighbors, as we are determined not to do; or they can co-exist in frigid isolation, as we are doing. But our prayer is that men everywhere will learn, finally, to live as brothers, to respect each other's differences, to heal each other's wounds, to promote each other's progress, and to benefit from each other's knowledge.

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave — to the ancient enemies of man — half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.

A diplomat's life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol.

The great aristocrat, the beloved leader, the profound historian, the gifted painter, the superb politician, the lord of language, the orator, the wit—yes, and the dedicated bricklayer—behind all of them was a simple man of faith, steadfast in defeat, generous in victory, resigned in age, trusting in a loving providence, and committing his achievements and his triumphs to a higher power.

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.

The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.

Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.

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

She thought of herself as an ugly duckling, but she walked in beauty in the ghettos of the world, bringing with her the reminder of her beloved St. Francis, "It is in the giving that we receive." And wherever she walked beauty was forever there.

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