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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.

William Safire

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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
Dictionary
Meaning
Word
Look
Looks
Need
Needs

More quotes by William Safire

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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
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A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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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.
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.
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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.
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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.
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.
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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.
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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.
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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
William Safire