Adlai Stevenson II Quotes

The human race has improved everything, but the human race.

Humans don't really improve on our own functioning, we only interfere with it, distort it, and disguise it.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

As human beings we are made to surpass ourselves and are truly ourselves only when transcending ourselves.

The satirical direction I have chosen is an indication of my disappointment in man, which is the opposite way of saying that I have high expectations for the human race.

Everybody is determined by his own experience.

Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.

The obsessions we have are pretty much the same our whole lives. Mine are people, the human condition, life.

My work is not so much a direct commentary as it is an open-ended observation of the absurdities around us.

Human beings are interested in the human condition.

The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed to perfection, but one step first, and then another on the ladder.

In the end, we know what makes us happy. We also know what makes us unhappy. That's the irony. We know and yet we still mess it up. That's part of the human condition, no, and why we need to work on it.

All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with a mighty urge to become otherwise.

Man will put foward a goal to raise himself to a new level to create a higher sicio-biological type.

Knowledge has value only insofar as it contributes to the all-round development of the whole nature of man.

I think the single most important, fascinating, and complex aspect of human nature is that we all know, deep down, that we are not what we ought to be - or as John Doe says in 'Seven,' 'We are not what was intended.'

There's a paradox with self-improvement, and it is this: the ultimate goal of all self-improvement is to reach the point where you no longer feel the need to improve yourself.

Man is man so long as he is struggling to rise above nature, and this nature is both internal and external.

Every man has at times in his mind the Ideal of what he should be, but is not. This ideal may be high and complete, or it may be quite low and insufficient; yet in all men, that really seek to improve, it is better than the actual character... Man never falls so low, that he can see nothing higher than himself.

Human beings all change. Not what they are but who they are. We have the power to change what we do with our life and turn it into our destiny.

The great majority of those who speak of perfectibility as a dream, do so because they feel that it is one which would afford them no pleasure if it were realized.

In other words, we are never freer than when we become most ourselves, most human, most just, most excellent, and the like.

Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining.

A civilization is only a way of life. A culture is the way of making that way of life beautiful. So culture is your office here in America, and as no stream can rise higher than its source, so you can give no more or better to architecture than you are. So why not go to work on yourselves, to make yourselves, in quality, what you would have your buildings be?

If you're reading it in a book, folks, it ain't self-help. It's help.