Republican or Democrat: Who Said That?
A political history quiz
By Denise Rivette
I recently heard a conservative politician quote Adlai Stevenson, who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president in 1952, 1956, and 1960. Curious, I looked up Adlai Stevenson to see if the quote was correctly attributed to him (it was) and found a collection of quotes, many that agreed with my sense of Americanism and a couple that tickled my sense of humor. After seeing many of them resembled Republican sentiments, I looked up several quotes from Ronald Reagan and other Republicans through the years and interspersed them with Stevenson’s. Can you identify the political affiliations and/or the authors of the 34 quotes below?
To see who said it, just click on the footnote number at the end of the quote. To return to the quote, click on the number in the footnote. Stevenson is the only Democrat quoted below. Most of the remaining are from Ronald Reagan, with cameos from other Republican presidents and conservative heavy hitters.
Who Said It?
“The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot do as well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”1
“More important than winning the election, is governing the nation. That is the test of a political party — the acid, final test.” 2
“May I suggest, don't discard the time-tested values upon which civilization was built simply because they're old. More important, don't let today's doomcriers and cynics persuade you that the best is past, that from here on it's all downhill.” 3
“Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.” 4
“What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.” 5
“I believe in a sound, strong environmental policy that protects the health of our people and a wise stewardship of our nation’s natural resources.” 6
We should make greater use of the United Nations as an economic agency ... we believe, to be sure, that anything which strengthens economic growth, national independence, human welfare, and democratic process will improve a nation's resistance to the virus of communism. But our first purpose is human betterment, and anything else is a by-product. 7
“Thomas Jefferson remains one of the towering figures in American history 239 years after his birth. Statesman, scholar, inventor, farmer, and philosopher, he was, first and foremost, a champion of individual liberty. Throughout his life he was a tireless advocate of free expression and the sanctity of property, for he knew that, to be whole, freedom must be economic as well as political.” 8
Now, we will go about these things gradually, because it will be the spirit of man that will make the laws successful and make it possible to enforce them continuously. It will not be troops of bayonets. We will have to proceed gradually. You do not upset habits and traditions that are older than the republic overnight.... There is, however, a question of what time is tolerable to bring about the family of man in this country...(I) will do everything I can to bring about unity even if I have to ask some of you to come about it gradually. 9
“And to you, my fellow citizens, let us join in a new determination to rebuild the foundation of our society, to work together, to act responsibly. Let us do so with the most profound respect for that which must be preserved as well as with sensitive understanding and compassion for those who must be protected.” 10
“In our interdependent world there is no longer any line of demarcation between social and political problems. The solution of one depends on how well we understand the other and the extent to which we succeed in doing both.” 11
“We shall reflect the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen; and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they're sick, and provide opportunity to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just in theory?” 12
“What has made us a nation is our love of liberty and our realization that we're part of a great historic venture, an experiment in freedom to test the ability of people to live together in freedom, respecting the rights of others and expecting that their rights, in turn, will be respected.” 13
The costliest blunders have been made by dictators who did not quite understand the working of real democracy and who mistook diversity for disunity. 14
There are men among us who use 'patriotism' as a club for attacking other Americans.... What can we say for the man who proclaims himself a patriot — and then for political or personal reasons attacks the patriotism of faithful public servants...? Intolerance and public irresponsibility cannot be cloaked in the shining armor of rectitude and righteousness. 15
“We have problems in our country, and many people are praying and waiting for God to do something. I just wonder if maybe God isn't waiting for us to do something. And while no one else is capable of doing everything, everyone is capable of doing something. This is the spirit that built and preserved our freedom, made us a humane and God-fearing people. It lives among us still, here in this house and across the land, and as long as it lives, so too will the America that we cherish.” 16
“…above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will or moral courage of free men and women.” 17
The goal of life is more than material advance; it is now and through all eternity, the triumph of spirit over matter, of love and liberty over force and violence. 18
The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to the freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism. 19
“Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.” 20
The power of the liberal way consists in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own. 21
“We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.” 22
A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular. 23
Government is more than the sum of all the interests; it is the paramount interest, the public interest. It must be the efficient, effective agent of a responsible citizenry, not the shelter of the incompetent and the corrupt. 24
“Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.” 25
“We have too long treated the natural world as an adversary rather than as a life-sustaining gift from the Almighty. If man has the genius to build, which he has, he must also have the ability and the responsibility to preserve.” 26
“Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God’s gifts into His face, as if they were of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them.” 27
“…Conservatism distrusts talk about freedom that gives exclusive stress to notions of rights and the claims that individuals make against society while it ignores the notion of responsibility.” 28
“While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment.” 29
I think self-examination and criticism are the great and not-so-secret weapons of democracy. 30
I agree with Dreher when he writes, ‘we can’t build anything good unless we live by the belief that man does not exist to serve the economy, but the economy exists to serve man…A society built on consumerism must break down eventually for the same reason socialism did’ ” 31
Democracy cannot be saved by supermen, but only by the unswerving devotion and goodness of millions of little men. 32
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. 33
In America anyone can be President, that's one of the risks you take. 34
Abraham Lincoln, Speeches & Writings 1832-1858
Adlai Stevenson
Ronald Reagan, Address at Commencement Exercises at the University of Notre Dame May 17, 1981
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson
Ronald Reagan, Radio address to nation on environmental and natural resources management, June 11, 1983
Adlai Stevenson
Ronald Reagan, Statement on the 239th Anniversay of the Birth of Thomas Jefferson April 13, 1982
Adlai Stevenson, 1956, comments regarding civil rights, Los Angeles, California.
Ronald Reagan, Excerpted from Address to the Nation on the Economy February 5, 1981
Adlai Stevenson
Ronald Reagan, Excerpted from Inaugural Address January 20, 1981
Ronald Reagan
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson
Ronald Reagan, Remarks on Private Sector Initiative at a White House Luncheon for National Religious Leaders April 13, 1982
President Ronald Reagan, First Inaugural Address, January 27, 1981
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson
President George W. Bush, Speech before Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001
Adlai Stevenson
Richard Nixon, Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, 1970
Adlai Stevenson
Adlai Stevenson
Richard Nixon, Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union, 1970
Gerald Ford, Remarks at dedication of National Environmental Research Center, July 3, 1975
Wendell Berry, An American essayist, novelist, poet and farmer.
William Harbour is the author of the book, Foundations of Conservative Thought: An Anglo-American Tradition in Perspective.
Barry Goldwater, “The Conscience of a Majority (1970)”
Adlai Stevenson
Paul Weyrich, A U.S. conservative political activist, commentator and founder of the Heritage Foundation
Adlai Stevenson
Theodore Roosevelt
Adlai Stevenson (did anyone else think it was Groucho Marx?)