Skip to content

This, I believe, is the core of the democratic spirit. When we acknowledge our own fallibility, tolerance and compromise become possible and fanaticism becomes absurd.

— J. William Fulbright The American Character (1963)

Another quote →

Topics

Democracy

More quotes by J. William Fulbright

Power confuses itself with virtue and tends also to take itself for omnipotence.

The Arrogance of Power (1966)

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not its taste, but its effect, ...

The Arrogance of Power (1966)

The true mark of greatness is not stridency but magnanimity.

The Arrogance of Power (1966)

The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.

When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.

All J. William Fulbright quotes →

You may also like

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: J. William Fulbright (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.