Quote

Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.

William Safire

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Writing
Casts
Subjects
Decision
Pundit
Means
Pundits
Write
Column
Two
Columns
Hard
Aside
Mean
Cast

More quotes by William Safire

Image
To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
William Safire
Image
A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
William Safire
Image
The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
Image
After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
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.
William Safire
Image
Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
William Safire
Image
I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
William Safire
Image
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
William Safire
Image
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.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
William Safire
Image
Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.
William Safire
Image
The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
William Safire
Image
The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
William Safire
Image
The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .
William Safire
Image
Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
William Safire
Image
No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire