J. William Fulbright
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.Collection: Society
Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations.Collection: Legal
In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.Collection: Politics
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them.Collection: Trust
Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations.
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.
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.
To be a statesman, you must first get elected.
In the long course of history, having people who understand your thought is much greater security than another submarine.
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.
There is an inevitable divergence between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it.
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.
Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high.
The exchange program is the thing that reconciles me to all the difficulties of political life.
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.
The junior senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatreds and prejudices of the American people that he has started a prairie fire which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control.
In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest.
We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.
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.
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.
What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.
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.
In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another.
I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as they seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive.
As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations.
Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relationsCollection: Educational
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.Collection: Sympathy
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.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Strong
The age of warrior kings and of warrior presidents has passed. The nuclear age calls for a different kind of leadership.... a leadership of intellect, judgment, tolerance and rationality, a leadership committed to human values, to world peace, and to the improvement of the human condition. The attributes upon which we must draw are the human attributes of compassion and common sense, of intellect and creative imagination, and of empathy and understanding between cultures.Collection: Kings
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.Collection: Faith
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.Collection: Country
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.Collection: Educational
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.Collection: Nice
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.Collection: Doe
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.Collection: Liars
Education is a slow moving but powerful forceCollection: Powerful
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.Collection: Educational
We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.Collection: Science
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.Collection: Art
The greatest single virtue of a strong legislature is not what it can do, but what it can prevent.Collection: Strong
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.Collection: Self
"Our government will soon become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective dictatorship.Collection: Government
We would be deliberately violating the fundamental obligations we assumed in the Act of Bogota establishing the Organization of American States.Collection: Organization