Adlai Stevenson: Human

“The knowledge he has acquired with age is not the knowledge of formulas, or forms of words, but of people, places, actions — a knowledge not gained by words but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love — the human experiences and emotions of this earth and of oneself and other men; and perhaps, too, a little faith, and a little reverence for things you cannot see.”

Adlai Stevenson

Address at Princeton University, "The Educated Citizen" (22 March 1954) http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/mudd/online_ex/stevenson/adlai1954.html
Context: What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is, for the most part, incommunicable. The laws, the aphorisms, the generalizations, the universal truths, the parables and the old saws — all of the observations about life which can be communicated handily in ready, verbal packages — are as well known to a man at twenty who has been attentive as to a man at fifty. He has been told them all, he has read them all, and he has probably repeated them all before he graduates from college; but he has not lived them all.
What he knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty boils down to something like this: The knowledge he has acquired with age is not the knowledge of formulas, or forms of words, but of people, places, actions — a knowledge not gained by words but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love — the human experiences and emotions of this earth and of oneself and other men; and perhaps, too, a little faith, and a little reverence for things you cannot see.

Love , Men , People , Age

“I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless.”

Adlai Stevenson

As quoted in Challenge of a Liberal Faith (1988), by George N. Marshall, Ch. 3 : A Contemporary Religion, p. 34
Context: I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.

Life , Fear , Thinking

“The early years of the United Nations have been difficult ones, but what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings?
Any great institution or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth.”

Adlai Stevenson

Context: The early years of the United Nations have been difficult ones, but what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings?
Any great institution or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth. We will not lose faith in the United Nations. We see it as a living thing and we will work and pray for its full growth and development. We want it to become what it was intended to be — a world society of nations under law, not merely law backed by force, but law backed by justice and popular consent.

Speech in Springfield Illinois (24 October 1952)

Pain , Peace , Idea , Birth

“Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them.”

Adlai Stevenson

Speech in Columbus, Ohio (3 October 1952); quoted in The International Thesaurus of Quotations (1970) edited by Rhoda Thomas Tripp, p. 429

Understanding

“Happily for us, students have not tried to overthrow the Government of the United States, but they certainly are making their views felt in public affairs. I think especially of the participation of American students in the great struggle to advance civil and human rights in America. Indeed, even a jail sentence is no longer a dishonor but a proud achievement.”

Adlai Stevenson

Commencement address at Colby College, Waterville, Maine (June 7, 1964), reported in The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson (1979), vol. 8, p. 567

Thinking

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

Adlai Stevenson

Radio address (29 September 1952)

Nature , Indifference

“Respect for intellectual excellence, the restoration of vigor and discipline to our ideas of study, curricula which aim at strengthening intellectual fiber and stretching the power of young minds, personal commitment and responsibility — these are the preconditions of educational recovery in America today; and, I believe, they have always been the preconditions of happiness and sanity for the human race.”

Adlai Stevenson

Speech to the United Parents Association, as quoted in The New York Times (6 April 1958)

Education , Idea , Study , Personality

“Fill the moral vacuum, the rational vacuum, we must; reconvert a population soaked in the spirit of materialism to the spirit of humanism we must, or bit by bit we too will take on the visage of our enemy, the neo-heathens.”

Adlai Stevenson

What I Think (1956), p. 54 http://books.google.com/books?id=3OchAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Fill+the+moral+vacuum+the+rational+vacuum+we+must+reconvert+a+population+soaked+in+the+spirit+of+materialism+to+the+spirit+of+humanism+we+must+or+bit+by+bit+we+too+will%22&pg=PA54#v=onepage

“The human race has improved everything but the human race.”

Adlai Stevenson

In "Wages are Going Lower!" (1951), William Joseph Baxter wrote, "One might almost say that the human race seems to have improved everything except people." Variations of this quote have appeared since both with and without attribution to Adlai Stevenson, but no documented connection to Stevenson is known.
Misattributed

“Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.”

Adlai Stevenson

Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (26 July 1952)

Pain , War , People , Truth

“To remember the loneliness, the fear and the insecurity of men who once had to walk alone in huge factories, beside huge machines—to realize that labor unions have meant new dignity and pride to millions of our countrymen—human companionship on the job, and music in the home—to be able to see what larger pay checks mean, not to a man as an employee, but as a husband and as a father—to know these things is to understand what American labor means.”

Adlai Stevenson

Speech (22 September 1952), reported in Report of Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor, Vol. 71 (1952)

Men , Fear , Music , Home