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I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.

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
Way
Welcome
Result
Color
Results
Ways
Expressiveness
Greater
Precision
Words
Added
Used
Provided

More quotes by William Safire

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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
William Safire
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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
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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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
William Safire
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
William Safire
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In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'
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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Never assume the obvious is true.
William Safire
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
William Safire
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The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.
William Safire
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
William Safire
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Some handsome and ambitious men believe they are above all morality, and a woman's virtue becomes a mere challenge to them.
William Safire
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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
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Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.
William Safire
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The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.
William Safire
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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
William Safire
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
William Safire
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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
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If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
William Safire