Word: understood
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...because he personified brainpower--not because he was "an Einstein"--but rather because he demonstrated that the imagination is capable of coming to terms with experience. Simply by gazing into existence, he concluded that time and space could be warped, that mass and energy were interchangeable. He understood that the world was a puzzle created for deciphering and, more, that a person's place in the order of things was to solve as much of the puzzle as possible. This is what makes a human human; this, and the governing elements of morals and humor...
...sail, to play tennis and golf, to run in the woods and ride horseback in the fields. Determined to overcome his disability, he devoted seven years of his life to grueling physical therapy. In 1928, however, when he accepted the Democratic nomination for Governor of New York, he understood that victory would bring an end to his daily therapy, that he would never walk under his own power again. For the remainder of his life--through four years as Governor of New York and 12 years as President--the mere act of standing up with his heavy metal braces locked...
Above all, Roosevelt possessed a magnificent sense of timing. He understood when to invoke the prestige of the presidency and when to hold it in reserve. He picked a first-class military team--General George Marshall, Admiral Ernest King, General Henry Arnold and Admiral William Leahy--and gave its members wide latitude to run the war. Yet at critical junctures he forced action, and almost all those actions had a salutary effect on the war. He personally made the hotly debated decision to invade North Africa; he decided to spend $2 billion on an experimental atom bomb; and he demanded...
...public-works effort to get America working again, rural electrification, the G.I. Bill. And, of course, his most enduring domestic creation, Social Security, a bond between generations that every President since has honored. Roosevelt proved that for markets to flourish, government must be devoted to opportunity for all. He understood that the initiative of individuals and the responsibilities of community must be woven together...
...with a new idea--"passive resistance," securing political rights through personal suffering and the power of truth and love. "Indians," he wrote, "will stagger humanity without shedding a drop of blood." He failed to provoke legal changes, and Indians gained little more than a newfound self-respect. But Gandhi understood the universal application of his crusade. Even his principal adversary, the Afrikaner leader Jan Smuts, recognized the power of his idea: "Men like him redeem us from a sense of commonplace and futility...