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.”

“What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact.”

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

“We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In the name of noble purposes men have committed unspeakable acts of cruelty against one another.”

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

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

“I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as they seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive.”

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

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

“In our excessive involvement in the affairs of other countries, we are not only living off our assets and denying our own people the proper enjoyment of their resources; we are also denying the world the example of a free society enjoying its freedom to the fullest.”