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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

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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
Ever
Japan
Way
Ignorant
Never
Completely
Would
Feeling
Bangkok
Like
Sure
Acted
People
President
Johnson
War
Pursued
Feelings
Vietnam

More quotes by 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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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
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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
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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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The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.
J. William Fulbright
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Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.
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
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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
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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
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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
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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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Our government will soon become what it is already a long way toward becoming, an elective dictatorship.
J. William Fulbright
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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.
J. William Fulbright
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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
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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
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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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We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts.
J. William Fulbright
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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
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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