J. William Fulbright Quotes - Page 3

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• We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which they are practiced in America with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American people.

  J. William Fulbright

  Party, Practice, Two

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• It's unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or idea while neglecting the needs of its own people.

  J. William Fulbright

  Ideas, People, Principles

  "Is America on the path to 'permanent war'?" by John Blake, www.cnn.com. November 24, 2010.

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• 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

  "The Legislator". Lecture delivered at the University of Chicago; in "The Works of the Mind" by Robert B. Heywood, edition for the University's Committee on Social Thought (1947), p. 119, 1946.

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• 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

  Congressional Record, vol. 107, p. 11703., June 29, 1961.

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• Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.

  J. William Fulbright

  Omnipotence, Virtue

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.16, Random House

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• Law is the essential foundation of stability and order both within societies and in international relations.

  J. William Fulbright

  Order, Law, Essentials

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• Intolerance of dissent is a well-noted feature of the American national character.

  J. William Fulbright

  Character, Intolerance, Dissent

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.42, Random House

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• 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

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.32, Random House

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• To be a statesman, you must first get elected.

  J. William Fulbright

  Political, Politics, Firsts

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• 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

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• 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

  War, Educational, Government

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• 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

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.16, Random House

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• 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 own failures.

  J. William Fulbright

  Unions, Done, Excuse

  "Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker". Book by J. William Fulbright, 1963.

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• 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

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.279, Random House

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• 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

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.114, Random House

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• 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

  J. William Fulbright (2011). “The Arrogance of Power”, p.32, Random House

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• 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, Hands

  Congressional Record, vol. 100, p. 1106., February 2, 1954.

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• 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

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• The exchange program is the thing that reconciles me to all the difficulties of political life.

  J. William Fulbright

  Political, Program, Difficulty

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• Like medieval theologians we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion... The perniciousness of the anti-Communist ideology of the Truman Doctrine arises not from any patent falsehood but from its distortion and simplification of reality, from its universalization and its elevation to the status of a revealed truth.

  J. William Fulbright

  Lying, Philosophy, Reality

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• 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

  "Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker". Book by J. William Fulbright, 1963.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

  "A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House". Book by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 1965.

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• 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

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

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