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.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that it is disrespectful to treat political candidates like consumer products that are bought and sold. Instead of focusing on their ideas and qualifications, people are trying to collect votes for them in the same way they collect coupons or box tops for cereal. This undermines the true purpose of democracy, which is to allow citizens to make informed decisions about their leaders.
More quotes from Adlai Stevenson
Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation.
The Republicans have a me too candidate running on a yes but platform, advised by a has been staff.
The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers.
We live in an era of revolution, the revolution of rising expectations.
Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
To me, there is something superbly symbolic in the fact that an astronaut, sent up as assistant to a series of computers, found that he worked more accurately and more intelligently than they. Inside the capsule, man is still in charge.
With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America’s exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?
There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.
We cannot be any stronger in our foreign policy for all the bombs and guns we may heap up in our arsenals than we are in the spirit which rules inside the country. Foreign policy, like a river, cannot rise above its source.
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.
A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House.
I will make a bargain with the Republicans. If they will stop telling lies about Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.
In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it’s just one of the risks he takes!