Political Quotes

Adlai Stevenson: Its effects can be felt; it influences our actions; it controls and possesses us; but to define it, or tell what it is…

On the record
Its effects can be felt; it influences our actions; it controls and possesses us; but to define it, or tell what it is, or how it produces these effects, is as far beyond our power as to imprison the sunbeam.
Said by
Adlai Stevenson

Editor's note · Context

Stevenson explores the elusive nature of influence, comparing it to the intangible quality of a sunbeam.

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