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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
Result
Color
Results
Ways
Expressiveness
Greater
Precision
Words
Added
Used
Provided
Way
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The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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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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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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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.
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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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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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George Washington had a tough second term.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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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.
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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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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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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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.
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