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  • Nathaniel Hawthorne quote: Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a...

    Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

    1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.