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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.

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
Jerks
Knee
Jerk
Knees
Better

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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 put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
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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.
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One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
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[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.
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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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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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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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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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The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.
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Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
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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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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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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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