Word: humankind
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mediocrity is the natural condition of humankind, then genius is the purest and rarest of diseases. Tortured writers, earless painters, mad scientists all live inside the quarantine of their own superiority, distanced by their difference from the world they illuminate and help-recreate. To 19th century romantics the genius was a superman; to most of us today he may seem both more and less than human, an idiot savant, a freak of nature...
...atom at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were going to harness its tremendous force in an atoms-for-peace program. They would build nuclear power plants producing electricity so easily that it would be "too cheap to meter." At a time when technology promised an almost boundless potential for improving humankind, nuclear power seemed so modern...
...enormous platitude: If men would behave decently the world would be decent." But the sentiment, he concluded, "is not such a platitude as it sounds." Indeed, for all the pessimism attributed to him posthumously, Orwell had an abiding, almost pious faith in the ability of that fragile, querulous species, humankind, to correct its deficiencies by the most radical process of all: thinking. In The Road to Wigan Pier he expressed the belief that "economic injustice will stop the moment we want it to stop, and no sooner, and if we genuinely want it to stop the method adopted hardly matters...
...heaven and all the birds have flown away." Afterward, standing in the chilly rain at a nearby airbase, Reagan tried to explain the sacrifice. "We commit our resources and risk the lives of those in our armed forces to rescue others from bloodshed and turmoil and to prevent humankind from drowning in a sea of tyranny," he said. "The world looks to America for leadership, and America looks to the men in its armed forces...
...anxious that the INF talks not be broken off just as the highly controversial deployment of NATO missiles is about to begin. Reagan heeded their urgings. Said he: "We must and will continue to reach out for arms-reduction agreements to reduce the nuclear and conventional arms that threaten humankind...