We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts.
Interpretation
Challenging conventional thinking can lead to innovation and progress.
This quote by J. William Fulbright emphasizes the importance of pushing beyond traditional boundaries of thought. It suggests that in order to foster creativity and find novel solutions to problems, we must be willing to embrace ideas that seem impossible or unconventional.
In practice
In a brainstorming session at work, to encourage wild ideas, one might say, 'Remember, we must dare to think unthinkable thoughts!'
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.
I endeavor to be wise when I cannot be merry, easy when I cannot be glad, content with what cannot be mended, and patient when there be no redress.
His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.
By profession a biologist, [Thomas Henry Huxley] covered in fact the whole field of the exact sciences, and then bulged through its four fences. Absolutely nothing was uninteresting to him. His curiosity ranged from music to theology and from philosophy to history. He didn't simply know something about everything; he knew a great deal about everything.
Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession - their ignorance.
He is the best man who, when making his plans, fears and reflects on everything that can happen to him, but in the moment of action is bold.
For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.
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