Top 50 J. William Fulbright Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Education is a slow moving but powerful force.”

— J. William Fulbright

2. “Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations.”

— J. William Fulbright

3. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

4. “Finally, the Program aims, through these means, to bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship.”

— J. William Fulbright

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

— J. William Fulbright

6. “We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts.”

— J. William Fulbright

7. “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

8. “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

9. “Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.”

— J. William Fulbright

10. “Israel controls the United States Senate.”

— J. William Fulbright

11. “We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.”

— J. William Fulbright

12. “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

13. “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

14. “Science has radically changed the conditions of human life on earth. It has expanded our knowledge and our power, but not our capacity to use them with wisdom.”

— J. William Fulbright

15. “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

16. “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

17. “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

18. “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

19. “There is an inevitable divergence between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it.”

— J. William Fulbright

20. “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

21. “Maturity requires a final accommodation between our aspirations and our limitations.”

— J. William Fulbright

22. “The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high.”

— J. William Fulbright

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

— J. William Fulbright

24. “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 failures.”

— J. William Fulbright

25. “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

26. “Intolerance of dissent is a well-noted feature of the American national character.”

— J. William Fulbright

27. “The case for government by elites is irrefutable.”

— J. William Fulbright

28. “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

29. “The greatest single virtue of a strong legislature is not what it can do, but what it can prevent.”

— J. William Fulbright

Featured in: Strong Quotes

30. “The exchange program is the thing that reconciles me to all the difficulties of political life. It’s the only activity that gives me some hope that the human race won’t commit suicide, though I still wouldn’t count on it.”

— J. William Fulbright

31. “The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.”

— J. William Fulbright

32. “The true mark of greatness is not stridency but magnanimity.”

— J. William Fulbright

33. “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

34. “We would be deliberately violating the fundamental obligations we assumed in the Act of Bogota establishing the Organization of American States.”

— J. William Fulbright

35. “To be a statesman, you must first get elected.”

— J. William Fulbright

36. “In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.”

— J. William Fulbright

37. “Some new machinery with adequate powers must be created now if our fine phrases and noble sentiments are to have substance and meaning for our children.”

— J. William Fulbright

38. “As a conservative power, the United States has a vital interest in upholding and expanding the reign of law in international relations.”

— J. William Fulbright

39. “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

40. “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

41. “There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world.”

— J. William Fulbright

42. “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

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

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

— J. William Fulbright

47. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

48. “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

49. “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

50. “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