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A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.

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
Lying
Truth
Believe
Liar
Men
Liars
Thinking
Believing
Tells
Lies
Honest

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Never assume the obvious is true.
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
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To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
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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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Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
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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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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
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The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.
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I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
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