There is...a spiritual hunger in the world today and it cannot be satisfied...by better cars on longer credit terms.
Adlai E. StevensonRead
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The commodification of political candidates undermines the democratic process.
Adlai E. Stevenson critiques the trend of treating political candidates as consumer products, suggesting that reducing the serious act of voting to a commercial transaction is degrading to democracy. This perspective highlights the importance of genuine engagement in the political process, rather than a superficial understanding driven by marketing tactics.
Themes
DemocracyPoliticsVotingCandidatesConsumerism
In practice
Example use cases
Discussing the role of marketing in modern elections during a political science lecture.
More from Adlai E. Stevenson
All quotes →What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is, for the most part, incommunicable.
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Journalists do not live by words alone, although sometimes they have to eat them.
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Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
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Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.
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I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
Adlai E. StevensonRead
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