"Never murder a man who is committing suicide"--Woodrow Wilson?

[Fred Shapiro]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2005, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

> Did Wilson really say this, and what does Fred have? The earliest Safire
> column is from 1972.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of American Quotations,
"Never ... murder a man who is committing suicide" appears in a letter
from Wilson to Bernard Baruch, 9 Aug. 1916.  In my experience, however,
the AHDAQ is extremely unreliable (even more than Bartlett's), so I am
nervous about this one.  If anyone cares to verify it, that would be
great.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
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   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press,
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