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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.

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
Character
Accountability
Right
Libertarian
Mean
Ethics
Something
Honesty
Integrity
Honor
Liberty
Doe

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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
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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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The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
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George Washington had a tough second term.
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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.
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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.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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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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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
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Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.
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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.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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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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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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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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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.
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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.
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