He was one of the most admired men of his time - and one of the most perplexing, a paradox within himself. Twice he sought his nation's highest office; yet he always thought of the presidency as a 'dread responsibility.' He was a politician without a politician's ways; instead of grinning gamely when, during one of his campaigns, a little girl handed him a stuffed baby alligator, Stevenson could only gape and exclaim, 'For Christ's sake, what's this?' He was a man of rare humor, often expressed in self-deprecating terms. Responding to criticism that he was too intellectual, that he talked over the heads of the voters, he tossed out a Latinism: Via ovum cranium difficilis est (The way of the egghead is hard).

He had that quality for which the Africans, who know how to appreciate it, have found a special term. 'Nommo' is the Bantu word for the gift of making life rat…

Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the …

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next.

I went to Cuba in July 1991, and I drove through the streets with Fidel Castro. There were a great deal of cheers. And I also waved back believing that these c…

Well may the boldest fear and the wisest tremble when incurring responsibilities on which may depend our country's peace and prosperity, and in some degree the…

I can and shall yield to no call that does not come from the spontaneous action and free will of the nation at large and void of the slightest agency of my own…