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Age
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What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Attitude
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She would rather light candles than curse the darkness and her glow has warmed the world.
-Adlai Stevenson, Eulogy of Eleanor Roosevelt, November 7, 1962
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Belief
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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
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Change
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Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Civilization
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The human race has improved everything, but the human race.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Communism
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Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Control
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A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Differences
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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
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Earth
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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, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Facts
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Accuracy is to a newspaper what virtue is to a lady, but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Fellowship
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On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Flattery
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Flattery is all right if you don't inhale.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Forgiveness
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I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
-Adlai Stevenson, "Time", retort to a heckler asking him to state his beliefs, November 1, 1963
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Freedom
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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
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We have confused the free with the free and easy.
-Adlai Stevenson
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A hungry man is not a free man.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Funerals
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Under the wide and starry sky,
-Adlai Stevenson
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Generations
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Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Golf
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Golf is a fine relief from the tensions of office, but we are a little tired of holding the bag.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Habits
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Laws are never as effective as habits.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Help
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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
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Insults
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I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Knowledge
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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, Speech at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 8, 1952
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Life
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It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!
-Adlai Stevenson
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Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
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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
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Patriotism
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Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion, but the tranquil ad steady dedication of a lifetime.
-Adlai Stevenson
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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
-Adlai Stevenson, Speech to the American Legion Convention in New York City, August 27, 1952
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Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Peace
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Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Politics
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A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth.
-Adlai Stevenson
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We mean by politics the people's business -- the most important business there is.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.
-Adlai Stevenson
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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
-Adlai Stevenson, On the Republican Party, 1952
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Power
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Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Presidency
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In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Principles
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It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Progress
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All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Prophecy
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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
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Proverbial Wisdom
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The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Society
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A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Speech (freedom of)
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The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.
-Adlai Stevenson
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The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Speeches (oratory)
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I asked him on whom or what he had based his oratorical style. Churchill replied, It was an American statesman who inspired me and taught me how to use every note of the human voice like an organ. Winston then to my amazement started to quote long excerpts from Bourke Cockran's speeches of 60 years before. He was my model, Churchill said. I learned from him how to hold thousands in thrall.
-Adlai Stevenson, about his last meeting with Churchill
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I sometimes marvel at the extraordinary docility with which Americans submit to speeches.
-Adlai Stevenson
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The relationship of the toastmaster to the 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.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Some people approach every problem with an open mouth.
-Adlai Stevenson
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I would rather be guilty of talking over a person's head than behind his back.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Survival
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Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Understanding
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We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Voting
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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
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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
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Words
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Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
-Adlai Stevenson
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Books by and about Adlai Stevenson
