To criticize one's country is to do it a service.... Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism-a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation. J. William Fulbright More Quotes by J. William Fulbright More Quotes From J. William Fulbright In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but its effects. J. William Fulbright 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 policypolitical 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 challengeor, in reality, to evade itby bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softnessthe softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas. J. William Fulbright 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. J. William Fulbright We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes. J. William Fulbright fool damn power want Insofar as international law is observed, it provides us with stability and order and with a means of predicting the behavior of those with whom we have reciprocal legal obligations. J. William Fulbright us legal behavior law The junior senator from Wisconsin, by his reckless charges, has so preyed upon the fears and hatreds and prejudices of the American people that he has started a prairie fire which neither he nor anyone else may be able to control. J. William Fulbright american control fire people The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust our own government statements. I had no idea until then that you could not rely on them. J. William Fulbright own you trust government What they fear, I think rightly, is that traditional Vietnamese society cannot survive the American economic and cultural impact. J. William Fulbright survive think society fear 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 excuses us because done
