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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.

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
Grammar
Perfection
Perfect

More quotes by William Safire

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Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.
William Safire
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
William Safire
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
William Safire
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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
William Safire
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
William Safire
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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.
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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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
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A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.
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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George Washington had a tough second term.
William Safire
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
William Safire
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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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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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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
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