J. William Fulbright

thumb|Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. James William Fulbright (9 April 1905 – 9 February 1995) was an American politician, academic, and statesman who represented Arkansas in the United States Senate from 1945 until his resignation in 1974. As of 2023, Fulbright is the longest serving chairman in the history of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is best known for his strong multilateralist positions on international issues, opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the creation of the international fellowship program bearing his name, the Fulbright Program. He supported racial segregation, supported the creation of the United Nations and opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee. Quotes 1940s What a curious picture it is to find man, homo sapiens, of divine origin, we are told, seriously considering going underground to escape the consequences of his own folly. With a little wisdom and foresight, surely it is not yet necessary to forsake life in the fresh air and in the warmth of the sunlight. What a paradox if our own cleverness in science should force us to live underground with the moles. Address to the Foreign Policy Association, New York City (October 20, 1945), in Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker (1963) The legislator is an indispensable guardian of our freedom. It is true that great executives have played a powerful role in the development of civilization, but such leaders appear sporadically, by chance. They do not always appear when they are most needed. The great executives have given inspiration and push to the advancement of human society, but it is the legislator who has given stability and continuity to that slow and painful progress. "The Legislator", lecture delivered at the University of Chicago (1946), edited for the Committee on Social Thought by Robert B. Heywood (1947), pp. 119–123 It is amazing how soon one becomes accustomed to the sound of one's voice, when forced to repeat a speech five or six times a day. As election day approaches, the size of the crowds grows; they are more responsive and more interested; and one derives a certain exhilaration from that which, only a few weeks before, was intensely painful. This is one possible explanation of unlimited debate in the Senate. "The Legislator" (1946) 1950s thumb|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 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. Speech in the Senate on McCarthyism (February 2, 1954), Congressional Record, vol. 100, p. 1105 Nature—pitiless in a pitiless universe—is 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. Remarks in the Senate (February 2, 1954), Congressional Record, vol. 100, p. 1,106 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. On Joseph McCarthy (November 30, 1954), in Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker (1963) 1960s To give this activity even covert support is of a piece 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. Memorandum to President Kennedy, opposing the Bay of Pigs invasion on moral and legal grounds (March 29, 1961), in Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days (1965), ch. 10 We would be deliberately violating the fundamental obligations we assumed in the Act of Bogota establishing the Organization of American States. Three-page memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk (March 31, 1961), in A Thousand Days (1965), ch. 10 The operation was wildly out of proportion to the threat. It would compromise our moral position in the world and make it impossible for us to protest treaty violations by the Communists. Meeting (April 4, 1961), in A Thousand Days (1965), ch. 10 thumb|The values upon which our system is built...imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril. It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril. Remarks in the Senate, June 29, 1961, Congressional Record, vol. 107, p. 11,703 To me, the irony of this involvement with size, as I observed earlier, is the unwillingness or inability of so many Americans to identify themselves with something as vast as the United States. Bigger cars, bigger parking lots, bigger corporate structures, bigger farms, bigger drug stores, bigger supermarkets, bigger motion-picture screens. The tangible and the functional expand, while the intangible and the beautiful shrink. Left to wither is the national purpose, national educational needs, literature and theater, and our critical faculties. The national dialogue is gradually being lost in a froth of misleading self-congratulation and cliche. National needs and interests are slowly being submerged by the national preoccupation with the irrelevant. "In Need of a Consensus," Penrose Memorial Lecture to the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia (April 20, 1961), in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, August 1961, p. 352 It seems to me that it is these extremists who are advocating a soft approach. Their oversimplifications and their baseless generalizations reflect the softness of those who cannot bear to face the burdens of a continuing struggle against a powerful and resourceful enemy. A truly tough approach, in my judgment, is one which accepts the challenge of communism with the courage and determination to meet it with every instrumentality of foreign policy—political and economic as well as military, and with the willingness to see the struggle through as far into the future as may be necessary. Those who seek to meet the challenge—or, in reality, to evade it—by bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softness—the softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas. Regarding radicals of the right, "Public Policy and Military Responsibility", speech at the opening session of the National War College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Washington, D.C., August 21, 1961, Congressional Record, vol. 107, p. 16,444 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. In Fulbright of Arkansas: The Public Positions of a Private Thinker (1963), p. 118 Fanaticism is not a characteristic of mature societies but of unstable and politically primitive societies. Nor is it an expression of strength and self-confidence. Address (September, 1964), in Congressional Record — Senate, vol. 110 (September 8, 1964), p. 21,676 When "freedom" is worshipped as a sublime and mystical state rather than as simply a necessary condition for human fulfillment, the faith in freedom itself ceases to express the democratic spirit and becomes something quite different; it ceases to express the conscience of a conservative and becomes instead the faith of a fanatic. Address (September, 1964) Insofar as it represents a genuine reconciliation of differences, a consensus is a fine thing; insofar as it represents the concealment of differences, it is a miscarriage of democratic procedure. I think we Americans tend to put too high a value on unanimity...as if there were something dangerous and illegitimate about honest differences of opinion honestly expressed by honest men. Speech in the U.S. Senate (October 22, 1965), in Congressional Record — Senate, vol. 111 (October 22, 1965), p. 28,373 The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute. "The Vietnam Fallout", speech to the Bureau of Advertising of the American Newspaper Association, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City (April 28, 1966), in Senator Fulbright: Portrait of a Public Philosopher (1966) The American Character (1963) "The American Character", Address at the Rockefeller Public Service Awards Presentation Luncheon, Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C. (December 5, 1963), in Congressional Record — Appendix, vol. 109, appx. (December 10, 1963), p. 7,519 The frontier experience taught us the great value of individual initiative and self-reliance...But the individualism of the frontier...has generated impatience with the complex and tedious procedures of law and glorified the virtues of direct individual action. It has instilled in us an easy familiarity with violence and vigilante justice. In the romanticized form in which it permeates the television and other mass media, the mythology of the frontier conveys the message that killing a man is not bad as long as you don't shoot him in the back, that violence is only reprehensible when its purpose is bad and that in fact it is commendable and glorious when it is perpetrated by good men for a good purpose. In this era of nuclear weapons and cold war, we live with constant crises and the continuing and immediate danger of incineration by hydrogen bombs. We are a people who have faced dangers before but we have always been able to overcome them by direct and immediate action. Now we are confronted with dangers vastly greater than we or any other nation has ever before known and we see no end to them and no solutions to them. Nor are there any solutions. There are only possibilities, limited, intermittent, and ambiguous, to alleviate the dangers of our time. For the rest, we have no choice but to try to live with the unsolved problems of a revolutionary world. This, I believe, is the core of the democratic spirit. When we acknowledge our own fallibility, tolerance and compromise become possible and fanaticism becomes absurd. This was the basic heritage of America — a heritage of tolerance, moderation, and individual liberty that was implanted from the very beginnings of European settlement in the New World. America has quite rightly been called a nation that was "born free." The Arrogance of Power (1966) New York: Random House, 0-812-99262-8 thumb|In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not its taste, but its effect. Power tends to confuse itself with virtue and a great nation is particularly susceptible to the idea that its power is a sign of God's favor, conferring upon it a special responsibility for other nations — to make them richer and happier and wiser, to remake them, that is, in its own shining image. Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence. 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. Introduction, p. 4 In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not its taste, but its effect, ... I.1, The Citizen and the University, p. 25 A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because 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. II.7, The Chinese Revolution, p. 154 The true mark of greatness is not stridency but magnanimity. III.9, Toward Peace in Asia, p. 199 There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power. Conclusion, p. 245 The Price of Empire (1967) "The Price of Empire", speech at the meeting of the American Bar Association in Hawaii (August 1967), in Haynes Bonner Johnson and Bernard M. Gwertzman, Fulbright: The Dissenter (1968), p. 305 In these ways the war in Vietnam is poisoning and brutalizing our domestic life. Psychological incompatibility has proven to be more controlling than financial feasibility, and the Great Society has become a sick society. The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high. 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. Quotes about Fulbright When I first got there I spotted Senator Fulbright, and I said to somebody who was with me, "I don't know if he remembers me-we met once-and I ought to go over and say hello." But, at that point, Fulbright came over to me. "I wanted to say hello," he said. "There isn't a day I don't read about you in the papers. You're doing a great job." It was good to hear him say that. I've always admired him. Bella Abzug, Bella!: Ms. Abzug Goes to Washington (1972) External links Category:1905 births category:1995 deaths Category:Members of the United States Senate Category:People from Missouri Category:United States presidential candidates, 1952 Category:Democratic Party (United States) politicians Category:Lawyers from the United States Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:University of Oxford alumni Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society Category:People of the Cold War