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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

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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
Took
Started
Point
Today

More quotes by William Safire

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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
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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.
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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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Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
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Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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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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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
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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.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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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.
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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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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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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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This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.
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I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
William Safire