William Lewis Safir Quotes
-
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.
-
Don't expect others to do your work for you.
-
Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
-
A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
-
[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.
-
The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
-
Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
-
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.
-
George Washington had a tough second term.
-
Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.
-
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.
-
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.
-
To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.
-
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.
-
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.
-
A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
-
Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
-
Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
-
I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
-
What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.