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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1900–65)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 350
AUTHOR: Adlai Ewing Stevenson (1900–65)
QUOTATION: When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.
ATTRIBUTION: ADLAI E. STEVENSON, governor of Illinois, speech to the American Legion convention, New York City, August 27, 1952.—Speeches of Adlai Stevenson, pp. 83–84 (1952).
SUBJECTS: Country