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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.

William Safire

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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
Begins
Week
Winning
Funny
War
Bargaining
Cannot
Negotiating
America
Negotiation
Humorous

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We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.
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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.
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I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
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George Washington had a tough second term.
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One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.
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On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.
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The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia - knowledge is power. Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you.
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.
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... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
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