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.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that those in power may mistakenly believe that their strength or authority is inherently virtuous and divinely sanctioned.
J. William Fulbright's quote highlights the danger of equating power with moral righteousness. He warns that nations, when powerful, are often prone to assume that their might signifies a special approval from a higher authority, which can lead to a disconnect between their actions and ethical principles, potentially resulting in justifications for unjust behavior under the guise of virtue.
In practice
In a lecture on political morality, a professor might use this quote to illustrate the complexities of power dynamics.
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.
He that buildeth his nest upon a Divine promise shall find it abide and remain until he shall fly away to the land where promises are lost in fulfillments.
Our disrespect for thinking: someone sitting in a chair, gazing out of a window blankly, always described as 'doing nothing'.
First causes are outside the realm of science.
There has never been a time in which I have been convinced from within myself that I am alive. You see, I have only such a fugitive awareness of things around me that I always feel they were once real and are now fleeting away. I have a constant longing, my dear sir, to catch a glimpse of things as they may have been before they show themselves to me.
For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, 'It might have been'.
But what more oft in nations grown corrupt, _x000D_ And by their vices brought to servitude, _x000D_ Than to love bondage more than liberty,_x000D_ Bondage with ease than strenuous liberty.
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