....Man's struggle to be rational about himself, about his relationship to his own society and to other peoples and nations involves a constant search for understanding among all peoples and all cultures-a search that can only be effective when learning is pursued on a worldwide basis.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of global understanding and learning in addressing human relationships and societal challenges.
J. William Fulbright's quote expresses the idea that in order to navigate the complexities of human relationships and societal structures, a rational approach is necessary. This rationality can only be achieved through a continuous pursuit of knowledge that transcends cultural and national boundaries, enabling a collective understanding among diverse peoples. In essence, it advocates for education and learning as vital tools for fostering global harmony and comprehension.
In practice
During a school assembly to promote cultural exchange programs.
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.
The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.
The only way you can invent tomorrow is if you break out of the enclosure that the school system has provided for you by the exams written by people who are trained in another generation.
Education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness, to teach him how to develop that uniqueness, and then to show him how to share it because that’s the only reason for having anything.
There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied Mathematics.
Taking trains and trams in Berlin, I noticed people reading. Books, I mean - not pocket-size devices that bleep as if censorious, on which even Shakespeare scans like a spreadsheet.
Education promotes equality and lifts people out of poverty. It teaches children how to become good citizens. Education is not just for a privileged few, it is for everyone. It is a fundamental human right.
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