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Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
J. William Fulbright
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J. William Fulbright
Age: 89 †
Born: 1905
Born: April 9
Died: 1995
Died: February 9
Banker
Farmer
Former United States Senator
Instructor
Lawyer
Lecturer
Politician
President
Sumner
Missouri
James William Fulbright
William Fulbright
Tends
Virtue
Also
Power
Take
Confuses
Omnipotence
More quotes by J. William Fulbright
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
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
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.
J. William Fulbright
The greatest single virtue of a strong legislature is not what it can do, but what it can prevent.
J. William Fulbright
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
The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.
J. William Fulbright
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
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
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
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
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
We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
J. William Fulbright
Our government will soon become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective dictatorship.
J. William Fulbright
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
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
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
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
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
Israel controls the United States Senate.
J. William Fulbright
....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
