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George Washington had a tough second term.

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
Washington
Tough
Second
Term
George

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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
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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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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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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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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.
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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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Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.
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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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This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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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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When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and permanently record your every activity, you are placed under unprecedented control.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
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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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Never assume the obvious is true.
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