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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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Books by and about Adlai Stevenson