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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

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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
Thinking
Dangerous
Unanimity
Differences
Illegitimate
Honest
Expressed
Opinion
Price
High
Honestly
Something
Tend
Men
Atheism
Think
Americans

More quotes by J. William Fulbright

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We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
J. William Fulbright
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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
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The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high.
J. William Fulbright
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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The greatest single virtue of a strong legislature is not what it can do, but what it can prevent.
J. William Fulbright
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One simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because 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
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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
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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
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Israel controls the United States Senate.
J. William Fulbright
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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
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The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.
J. William Fulbright
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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
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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
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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
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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