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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  James William Fulbright (1905–95)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 580
AUTHOR: James William Fulbright (1905–95)
QUOTATION: It seems to me that it is these extremists who are advocating a soft approach. Their oversimplifications and their baseless generalizations reflect the softness of those who cannot bear to face the burdens of a continuing struggle against a powerful and resourceful enemy. A truly tough approach, in my judgment, is one which accepts the challenge of communism with the courage and determination to meet it with every instrumentality of foreign policy—political and economic as well as military, and with the willingness to see the struggle through as far into the future as may be necessary. Those who seek to meet the challenge—or, in reality, to evade it—by bold adventures abroad and witch hunts at home are the real devotees of softness—the softness of seeking escape from painful realities by resort to illusory panaceas.
ATTRIBUTION: Senator J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT, “Public Policy and Military Responsibility,” speech at the opening session of the National War College and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Washington, D.C., August 21, 1961, Congressional Record, vol. 107, p. 16444. He was referring to radicals of the right.
SUBJECTS: Extremism