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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

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
Least
Lasts
Last
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Superlatives
Cliches
Cliche
Plague
Avoid

More quotes by William Safire

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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
William Safire
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... 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
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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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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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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
William Safire
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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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A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
William Safire
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George Washington had a tough second term.
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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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
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It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.
William Safire
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
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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Never assume the obvious is true.
William Safire