J. William Fulbright famous quotes

The essence of intercultural education is the acquisition of empathy-the ability to see the world as others see it, and to allow for the possibility that others may see something we have failed to see, or may see it more accurately. The simple purpose of the exchange program...is to erode the culturally rooted mistrust that sets nations against one another. The exchange program is not a panacea but an avenue of hope....
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Simple #Essence

Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Communication #People

We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Thinking #World #Possibility

The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high.
-- J. William Fulbright

#War #America #Soul

International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace-eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Men #Empathy

The Program further aims to make the benefits of American culture and technology available to the world and to enrich American life by exposing it to the science and art of many societies.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Art #Educational #Technology

The rapprochement of peoples is only possible when differences of culture and outlook are respected and appreciated rather than feared and condemned, when the common bond of human dignity is recognized as the essential bond for a peaceful world.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Differences #Peaceful #Essentials

In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Long #People #Understanding

The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Country #Patriotic #House

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Freedom #Medicine #Democracy

Education is the best means-probably the only means-by which nations can cultivate a degree of objectivity about each other's behavior and intentions. It is the means by which Russians and Americans can come to understand each others' aspirations for peace and how the satisfactions of everyday life may be achieved.....
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Mean #Objectivity

It is in a way a mystery that, instead of demanding that their governments give primary attention to their own needs and aspirations, most of the citizens of big counties-those, that is, that have the status of being "powers" in the world-far from being self-centered or materialistic as they are commonly credited with being, the ordinary citizen and his elected representative all too often turn out to be romantics, ready and eager to sacrifice programs of health, education and welfare for the power and pride of the nation....
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Pride #Sacrifice

Of all the joint ventures in which we might engage, the most productive, in my view, is educational exchange. I have always had great difficulty-since the initiation of the Fulbright scholarships in 1946-in trying to find the words that would persuasively explain that educational exchange is not merely one of those nice but marginal activities in which we engage in international affairs, but rather, from the standpoint of future world peace and order, probably the most important and potentially rewarding of our foreign-policy activities.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Nice #Views

The Israelis object to an imposed settlement I don't know what they mean by an imposed settlement. It's quite obvious, without the all out support by the United States in money and weapons and so on the Israelis couldn't do what they've been doing. So we bear a very great share of the responsibility for the continuation of this...of this state of warfare.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Mean #Responsibility #Support

What a curious picture it is to find man, ***** sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Men #Air #Littles

As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Law #United States #Reign

Maturity requires a final accommodation between our aspirations and our limitations.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Maturity #Finals #Accommodations

We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Positive Thinking #Thinking #Dare

To be a statesman, you must first get elected.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Political #Firsts

There has been a strong tradition in this country that it is not the function of the military to educate the public on political issues.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Country #Strong #Military

When we violate the law ourselves, whatever short-term advantage may be gained, we are obviously encouraging others to violate the law; we thus encourage disorder and instability and thereby do incalculable damage to our own long-term interests.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Law #Long #May

This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."
-- J. William Fulbright

#School #Democracy #Atheism

It is a curiosity of human nature that lack of self-assurance seems to breed an exaggerated sense of power and mission.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Self #Curiosity #Atheism

We would be deliberately violating the fundamental obligations we assumed in the Act of Bogota establishing the Organization of American States.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Organization #Would Be #Fundamentals

During a single week of July 1967, 164 Americans were killed and 2100 were wounded in city riots in the United States. We are truly fighting a two-front war and doing badly in both. Each war feeds on the other and, although the President assures us that we have the resources to win both wars, in fact we are not winning either.
-- J. William Fulbright

#War #Fighting #Winning

One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian ... one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Trying #Barbarians #Damage

The great majority of the Senate of the United States...somewhere around 80 percent...are completely in support of Israel, anything Israel wants. This has been demonstrated time and again, and this has made it difficult.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Israel #Support #Majority

Well, we have the leverage in the sense that we supply all the wherewithal...or a major part of the wherewithal to finance or to pay for everything Israel does. We don't have any leverage in the sense that Israel controls the Senate. The Senate is at least...a subservient, in my opinion, much too much. We should be more concerned about the United States' interest, rather than doing the bidding of Israel. This is a most unusual development.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Israel #United States #Doe

Israel's shooting down of a civilian airplane and then the killing of 107 innocent peopel aboard, and their raid into neutral Lebanon are very dangerous developments. There's only one way I can see to stop it...is for the United States to take a very strong stand that this has to be settled...politically settled.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Strong #Airplane #Israel

Once imbued with the idea of a mission, a great nation easily assumes that it has the means as well as the duty to do God's work.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Mean #Ideas #Assuming

There has been a tendency through the years for reason and moderation to prevail as long as things are going tolerably well or as long as our problems seem clear and finite and manageable.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Years #Long #Problem

We are trying to remake Vietnamese society, a task which certainly cannot be accomplished by force and which probably cannot be accomplished by any means available to outsiders.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Mean #Trying #Tasks

Naturepitiless in a pitiless universeis certainly not concerned with the survival of Americans or, for that matter, of any of the two billion people now inhabiting this earth. Hence, our destiny, with the aid of God, remains in our own hands.
-- J. William Fulbright

#God #Destiny #Two

It is amazing how soon one becomes accustomed to the sound of ones voice, when forced to repeat a speech five or six times a day. As election day approaches, the size of the crowds grows; they are more responsive and more interested; and one derives a certain exhilaration from that which, only a few weeks before, was intensely painful. This is one possible explanation of unlimited debate in the Senate.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Voice #Speech #Exhilaration

There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Two #America #Self

....Man's struggle to be rational about himself, about his relationship to his own society and to other peoples and nations involves a constant search for understanding among all peoples and all cultures-a search that can only be effective when learning is pursued on a worldwide basis.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Struggle #Men

"The making of peace is a continuing process that must go on from day to day, from year to year, so long as our civilization shall last."
-- J. William Fulbright

#Peace #Civilization #Years

We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Politics #Want #Fool

We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Science #Thinking #Care

Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations. Man's capacity for decent behavior seems to vary directly with his perception of others as individual humans with human motives and feelings, whereas his capacity for barbarism seems related to his perception of an adversary in abstract terms, as the embodiment, that is, of some evil design or ideology.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Communication #Men

The exchange program is the thing that reconciles me to all the difficulties of political life. It's the only activity that gives me some hope that the human race won't commit suicide, though I still wouldn't count on it.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Suicide #Educational #Race

Finally, the Program aims, through these means, to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Mean #Compassion

Some new machinery with adequate powers must be created now if our fine phrases and noble sentiments are to have substance and meaning for our children.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Children #Future #Noble

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Freedom #Democracy #Dissent

The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace, not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our failures.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Done #Unions #Excuse

Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Order #Law #Foundation

It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Peace #Order #Law

Power tends to confuse itself with virtue, and a great nation is peculiarly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Ideas #Favors #Ethics

To criticize one's country is to do it a service.... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism-a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Country #Hero #Believe

The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.
-- J. William Fulbright

#War #Government #Vietnam

With respect to the creation of the program, I introduced the bill in September 1945, immediately after the end of the war with Japan, in August of that year. A number of considerations, of course, entered into my decision to introduce the bill, growing from my own experience as a Rhodes scholar and the experiences our government had had with the first Word War debts, [Herbert] Hoover's efforts in establishing the Belgian-American Education Foundation after World War I, [and] the Boxer Rebellion indemnity.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #War #Japan

The preservation of our free society in the years and decades to come will depend ultimately on whether we succeed or fail in directing the enormous power of human knowledge to the enrichment of our own lives and the shaping of a rational and civilized world order....It is the task of education, more than any other instrument of foreign policy to help close the dangerous gap between the economic and technological interdependence of the people of the world and their psychological, political and spiritual alienation.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Spiritual #Educational #Order

There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Intelligent #America #Empathy

There is nothing obscure about the objectives of educational exchange. Its purpose is to acquaint Americans with the world as it is and to acquaint students and scholars from many lands with America as it is-not as we wish it were or as we might wish foreigners to see it, but exactly as it is-which by my reckoning is an "image" of which no American need be ashamed.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Educational #Land #America

A nation's budget is full of moral implications; it tells what a society cares about and what it does not care about; it tells what its values are.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Doe #Care #Moral

I'm sure that President Johnson would never have pursued the war in Vietnam if he'd ever had a Fulbright to Japan, or say Bangkok, or had any feeling for what these people are like and why they acted the way they did. He was completely ignorant.
-- J. William Fulbright

#War #Japan #People

The greatest single virtue of a strong legislature is not what it can do, but what it can prevent.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Strong #Virtue #Legislature

The legislator is an indispensable guardian of our freedom. It is true that great executives have played a powerful role in the development of civilization, but such leaders appear sporadically, by chance. They do not always appear when they are most needed. The great executives have given inspiration and push to the advancement of human society, but it is the legislator who has given stability and continuity to that slow and painful progress.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Powerful #Inspiration #Civilization

Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Omnipotence #Virtue

There is an inevitable divergence between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Men #World #Inevitable

Education is a slow moving but powerful force
-- J. William Fulbright

#Powerful #Moving #Force

The junior Senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatred of uninformed and credulous people that he has started a prairie fire, which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control.
-- J. William Fulbright

#War #Fire #People

To give [the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba] even covert support is on a par with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world, nor on our own consciences.
-- J. William Fulbright

#War #Pigs #Giving

I think we Americans tend to put too high a price on unanimity, as if there were something dangerous and illegitimate about honest differences of opinion honestly expressed by honest men.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Men #Thinking #Differences

Education is a slow-moving but powerful force. It may not be fast enough or strong enough to save us from catastrophe, but it is the strongest force available for that purpose and in its proper place, therefore, is not at the periphery, but at the center of international relations.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Strong #Powerful #Moving

The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Feelings #Excess #Asia

Insofar as it represents a genuine reconciliation of differences, a consensus is a fine thing; insofar as it represents a concealment of differences, it is a miscarriage of democratic procedure.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Miscarriage #Agreement #Differences

When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled. It has no apparatus to deal with the boor, the liar, the lout, and the antidemocrat in general.
-- J. William Fulbright

#Liars #Men #Abuse

I do not think it is "selling America short" when we ask a great deal of her; on the contrary, it is those who ask nothing, those who see no fault, who are really selling America short!
-- J. William Fulbright

#Thinking #America #Faults