“It was always accounted a virtue in a man to love his country. With us it is now something more than a virtue. It is a necessity.”
Speech to the American Legion convention, New York City (27 August 1952); as quoted in "Democratic Candidate Adlai Stevenson Defines the Nature of Patriotism" in Lend Me Your Ears : Great Speeches In History (2004) by William Safire, p. 81 - 82
Context: It was always accounted a virtue in a man to love his country. With us it is now something more than a virtue. It is a necessity. When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
Men who have offered their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something; it is the love of something.
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Adlai Stevenson 131
mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the… 1900–1965Related quotes
“Making a virtue of necessity.”
III, 86
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Section 3, member 4, subsection 1.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III
“The good citizen need not of necessity possess the virtue which makes a good man.”
Book III, 1276b.34
Politics
Act I., Scene I. — (Fabritio).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 328.
L’Alessandro (1544)
“Others made a virtue of necessity.”
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564), Chapter 22.
“3313. Make a Virtue of Necessity.”
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Wit and valor are qualities that are more easily ascertained than virtue, or the love of wisdom.”
Vol. 1, Chap. 1.
The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Volume 1 (1776)
“Curse on his virtues! they've undone his country.”
Act IV, scene iv.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)
“We give to necessity the praise of virtue.”
Laudem virtutis necessitati damus.
Book I, Chapter VIII, 14
Compare: "To maken vertue of necessite", Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, "The Knightes Tale", line 3044
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)