We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every ten minutes.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on human impulsiveness and the freedom of choice.
J. William Fulbright's quote captures the essence of human behavior, highlighting our tendency to act on whims and impulses without much consideration. It suggests that while we possess the power to make choices, we often make poor decisions hastily, underscoring a critique of our judgement and the consequences of our actions.
In practice
In a discussion about decision-making in a team 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.
The biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.
The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
Their reward for enduring the awful experience was the right to tell people about it.
When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience.
Since all of us desire to be happy, and since we evidently become so on account of our use—that is our good use—of other things, and since knowledge is what provides this goodness of use and also good fortune, every man must, as seems plausible, prepare himself by every means for this: to be as wise as possible. Right?
The real scholar learns how to evolve the unknown from the known, and draws near the master.
Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.
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