J. William Fulbright Quotes

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• 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

  84 Copy quote

• 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

  Sympathy, Education, Hope

  88 Copy quote

• 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

  Education, Wisdom, Peace

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  Change, Thinking, World

  62 Copy quote

• 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

  25 Copy quote

• 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.

  J. William Fulbright

  Kings, Warrior, Compassion

  25 Copy quote

• 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, Culture

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

  J. William Fulbright

  Long, People, History

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• 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

  Faith, Freedom, Medicine

  1966 Speech to the US Senate, 21 Apr.

  33 Copy quote

• 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, Believe, Hero

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• 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

  37 Copy quote

• 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

  Nice, Educational, Views

  30 Copy quote

• 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

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• 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, Indulge In

  J. William Fulbright's speech in the Senate on McCarthyism (February 2, 1954), as quoted in "Congressional Record", Volume 100 (p. 1105), 1954.

  28 Copy quote

• Education is a slow moving but powerful force

  J. William Fulbright

  Powerful, Moving, Force

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• In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

  J. William Fulbright

  Freedom, Political, Democracy

  1966 Speech to the US Senate, 21 Apr.

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  31 Copy quote

• 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

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• 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

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  33 Copy quote

• The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.

  J. William Fulbright

  Country, Patriotic, House

  "Senator Fulbright: Portrait of a Public Philosopher". Book by Tristram Coffin, 1966.

  17 Copy quote

• The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high.

  J. William Fulbright

  Peace, War, America

  "Fulbright: The Dissenter". Book by Haynes Bonner Johnson and Bernard M. Gwertzman, 1968.

  31 Copy quote

• 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

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• There is an inevitable divergence between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it.

  J. William Fulbright

  Men, World, Inevitable

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• To ask for overt renunciation of a cherished doctrine is to expect too much of human nature. Men do not repudiate the doctrines and dogmas to which they have sworn their loyalty. Instead they rationalize, revise, and re-interpret them to meet new needs and new circumstances, all the while protesting that their heresy is the purest orthodoxy.

  J. William Fulbright

  Loyalty, Men, Doctrine

  6 Copy quote

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