William Lewis Safir (William Safire) Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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You gotta ask 'why' questions. 'Why did you do this?' A 'why' question you can't answer with one word.
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Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.
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As far as female vocalists, I love Heart, Joan Jett, Courtney Love, Laura Branigan, Linda Ronstadt, Barbra Streisand - or going back to when I was a child, Aileen Quinn, the original Annie.
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Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
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Anyone who sets foot into the 'Watchmen' universe and isn't just a little nervous should be given a few days of electroshock therapy. I've always considered 'Watchmen' to be one of the best graphic novels ever written, and when it came out back in 1986 I was as blown away as everyone else. Just masterful.
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I was working at the NSA. I don't know, I was just bored. I just knew that's not what I was supposed to be doing with my life.
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I think Barack Obama has brought a new level of ethical standards to Washington. Has he changed some basic hard-knuckle politics? No. You need hard-knuckle politics to succeed.
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He's this amazing ambassador for all superheroes. What we've made as a film not only examines that but is also an amazing adventure story. It's been an honor to work on. As a comic book fan, Superman is like the Rosetta Stone of all superheroes.
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America is essentially an entrepreneurial culture: the sizzle is the steak, because, after all, if you buy the sizzle, the steak comes with it. Canada's, in contrast, is a primary-producing culture: we'll buy the steak and hope to get a little sizzle with it. But we know we can't eat sizzle.
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But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns.
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All the animals I've painted always have a relationship with man. I have been told that part of the knowledge of the human anatomy comes from animals.
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Conflict is the beginning of consciousness.
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There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true.
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I think it's horrible that people have to be told. Don't smoke! Everybody knows it's bad for the health. But they have to forbid it.
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We wanted to guide the musicians, so we could create our own sound. We would never let the band just go in and play the chord sheets. We were very focused on what we had in mind for these productions.
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Concerning Poland, I can only say that the peoples of Central Europe and Hungary are a community in fate, to the death. Many of us would spill our blood for Poland any time. And vice versa: in an emergency, many Polish people would give his life to protect Hungarians. This has happened more than once over the course of history.
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As President Obama clearly said just a few months ago, China must play by the international rules, the international trading system from which they've benefited so much.
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I love hip hop. It's such an appendage for me. It's something that's always shaped my experience out in the world.
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I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things. … Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual … but everything is sexual … but alcohol.
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Can the word ‘best’ mean anything at all, except to some particular person in some particular mood? Perhaps not - so if we allow the word to stand as an absolute, you, or you, or perhaps you, may be appalled at omissions or inclusions or, never having read me before, may even be impelled to cry out, ‘Good heavens, are those his best?’
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A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements.
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We are not afraid to be entertainers.
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Every message of despair is the statement of a situation from which everybody must freely try to find a way out.
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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.
