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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of values over material wealth in shaping society's image and identity.
J. William Fulbright's quote highlights that it is not material success or infrastructure that truly captivates others, but the foundational values that underpin a society. These values encompass not only personal freedom and liberty but also the commitment to peace, law, and communal benefit. The quote warns that straying from these core principles can lead to dire consequences for both individuals and society as a whole.
In practice
In a speech about community values during a town hall meeting.
International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace-eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.
The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high.
Maturity requires a final accommodation between our aspirations and our limitations.
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.
In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes.
Karate is like boiling water: without heat, it returns to it's tepid state
Although I'm an atheist who believes only in great nature, I recognize the spiritual richness and grandeur of the Roman Catholicism in which I was raised.
Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.
You need seek God neither below or above.He is no farther away than the door of the heart.
O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.
By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that' becomes 'I'm like that.'
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