Word: sir
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Sir: We needed that. Those three brave and simple men, flying farther and faster to more forbidding frontiers than ever before, were an inspiration we have needed and must not now let slip. In tormented 1968, symbols of pride and constructive achievement were singularly lacking in our national life, but to end on such an upswing might be just what we need to urge us to work harder, moan less, and move into 1969 with a new resolve to overcome our earthbound problems...
...Sir: You might be directed to the words of Thomas Merton, who died just before the end of this strange year: "What is the good of exalting the 'greatness of man' simply because the concerted efforts of technicians, soldiers and politicians manage to put a man on the moon while four-fifths of the human race remains in abject misery, not properly clothed or fed, in lives subject to arbitrary and senseless manipulations by politicians or violence at the hands of police, hoodlums or revolutionaries? Certainly the possibilities and the inherent nobility of man are stupendous...
...Sir: Is it that the criterion for greatness is success? Or is it that 1968 was so terrifying a year for human relations that we must salute a concrete accomplishment made possible by the less human of human virtues, efficiency? I don't quite know. But, to me, 1968 was a year of human commitment. More of mankind than ever before became genuinely concerned for their fellow man. There was more hope arid more despair, more excitement and more tragedy. But, above all, commitment. 1968 was not a year to salute the successes of science; it was a year...
...Sir: We on earth, all of us, do thank you, our astronauts, for your marvelous message, your outstanding example of heroism and humility, your perfect teamwork along with thousands of fellow Americans. You will lead today's youth out of the morass of self-pity and destruction, you will teach the new generation the world over to follow on the road of selfdiscipline, hard work and heroic achievement that is the behavior of a true American citizen...
...Sleep of Reason is the tenth of the Strangers and Brothers novels, Lord Snow's melancholy, quasi-autobiographical saga of the rise of Lewis Eliot from lower-middle-class obscurity to knighthood. In many of the previous novels, Sir Lewis' empirical eye focused acutely on the intricate and polished parquetry of the English Establishment as he proceeded through the corridors of power. In The Sleep of Reason, that same cool eye is cast on more amorphous matters as the author struggles with formulations about such things as free will, responsibility and human nature. Recently C. P. Snow informed...