Word: soft-spoken
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...invasion of Chad by Libya." Much of the credit for Chad's recent achievements goes to Habre, a French-trained lawyer who has managed to create a sense of unity in a country that has never known the meaning of the word. Buoyed by these successes, the soft-spoken Habre sounded unusually confident last week when he told his countrymen, "Our objective is to preserve our territorial integrity, and our success is only a matter of time...
...certainly is not now. He sometimes seems to be dancing a curious line between fabulous profits and grim losses. What he was and continues to be is the world's biggest spender, a man whose unrivaled profligacy gilds his self-image as a grand merchant-statesman. This soft-spoken man with a gift for putting people at ease, the product of a strict Islamic upbringing from one of the world's most conservative and ascetic nations, has become an international symbol of sybaritic self-indulgence. "I am an artist with my wealth," he says in quiet measured tones while relaxing...
...Marcos' plans for victory were upset by a slight, bespectacled mother of five, who had entered politics only two months earlier. When she went to fill out her application for the presidency, Corazon Aquino had nothing to enter under OCCUPATION but "Housewife." The last office for which the soft-spoken - widow had been chosen was valedictorian of her sixth-grade class. In fact, her chief, if not her only, political strengths seemed to be her innocence of politics and the moral symbolism of her name. In Spanish, her first name meant "heart"; in Philippine politics, her second signified "martyred opposition...
During the past 20 years the soft-spoken physicist has undergone a remarkable transformation in the eyes of his countrymen. Once he was a highly decorated scientist who in the 1950s helped develop the first Soviet hydrogen bomb; by the early 1970s he had become an outcast among his own people as a result of his relentless campaign for human rights and disarmament. In 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but was not allowed to go to Oslo to receive it. In January 1980 he was arrested by the KGB after criticizing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan...
...party -- and the nation -- during the Eisenhower years, combining a progressive outlook on social issues with a pragmatic one on international affairs. They are nearly all gone now, shunted aside by the more populist conservatism of the Age of Reagan. One of the last of that breed, the soft-spoken, easygoing Charles McC. Mathias Jr. of Maryland, is leaving the Senate in exactly the manner in which he served there: with quiet detachment and dignity...