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Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. Thinking implies disagreement; and disagreement implies nonconformity; and nonconformity implies heresy; and heresy implies disloyalty—so, obviously, thinking must be stopped. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom.

— Adlai Stevenson II A Call to Greatness (1954)

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Mind

More quotes by Adlai Stevenson II

We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present.

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.

What I Think (1956)

She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.

I believe in the infinite wisdom that envelops and embraces me and from which I take direction, purpose, strength.

Essay in This I Believe : 2 (1952)

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

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.

Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Adlai Stevenson II (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.