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William Safire Inspirational Quotes (89)

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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire
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Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
William Safire
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
William Safire
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One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
William Safire
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
William Safire
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One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
William Safire
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.
William Safire
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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
William Safire
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