The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that the pursuit of power and empire compromises core values and ethics.
J. William Fulbright's quote reflects on the moral cost associated with the pursuit of empire by the United States. It warns that the quest for power and influence can lead to significant sacrifices, including the loss of essential values and ethics, implying that such a cost is unjustifiable for any nation that aspires to uphold its soul and integrity.
In practice
During a discussion about foreign policy, one might refer to Fulbright's quote to emphasize the importance of ethical considerations.
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.
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 biggest lesson I learned from Vietnam is not to trust [our own] government statements.
A globalized world is by now a familiar fact of life. Building walls or moats may sound appealing, but the future belongs to those who tend to their people and then boldly engage the rest of the world, near and far.
Animals can communicate quite well. And they do. And generally speaking, they are ignored
Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace
The more we are proud that the Bethlehem story is plain enough to be understood by the shepherds, and almost by the sheep, the more do we let ourselves go, in dark and gorgeous imaginative frescoes or pageants about the mystery and majesty of the Three Magian Kings.
In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and repossession, and suffer his reason and feelings to determine for themselves; and that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of man, and generously enlarge his view beyond the present day.
People will always prefer black-and-white over shades of grey, and so there will always be the temptation to hold overly-simplified beliefs and to hold them with excessive confidence
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