Word: profess
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...just wrong but dangerous to underestimate the rationality of regimes that profess the craziest of ends. The very designation "crazy state" inclines those sure of their own sanity to let down their guard. Europe catastrophically underestimated Hitler because he was plainly a madman. That he was. It did not prevent him from conquering Europe...
Economic Cooperation. How far are the Soviets willing to go to join the international economic community? Here too their words are surprising. They profess to be interested, for example, in participating in such capitalist cabals as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the International Monetary Fund. The question is whether they are willing to make the substantial accommodations involved. Says Peter Peterson, former Commerce Secretary under Richard Nixon and now chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations: "For GATT, this would mean having market prices for commodities in order to prevent unfair dumping practices. For the IMF, this...
Science-Fiction Writer Ray Bradbury at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, Calif.: * Sometimes we need to fuse our lives again with those people who seem at times to be antagonists -- you young men especially, because it is hard for us men to profess our love. It is quite often very difficult for your fathers and for you. So for you young men, when the ceremony is over, I want you to run over to the old man. Grab him, hug him and kiss him and say, "Dad, I love you and I thank you for all the years." That's part...
...dealing with one another. In our personal and professional lives, we know that we cannot build trust by heaping abuse on those we do not like, by sowing confusion with campaigns of disinformation, by ignoring agreements that prove inconvenient, by conducting secret operations that violate every moral standard we profess. Yet all of these tactics have become all too familiar in the conduct of foreign policy. While international relations and human relations are not the same, it is surely time to ask whether we have not become too impressed with the short-term gains to be derived from these questionable...
Such nostrums aroused little enthusiasm outside the Great Hall of the People. Many Chinese, wearied by the violent eddies and reversals that continue to mark their country's political life, profess scant interest in matters of state. "These things don't concern me," said a taxi driver in Tiananmen Square, where red banners flew in honor of the People's Congress. Concurred a septuagenarian scholar: "I really don't listen to this sort of thing any more." And a Peking intellectual added his own apolitical perspective: "My friends and I just gather together to eat and drink and make...