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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
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
Cynicism
Caused
Empathy
Ignorance
Speech
Care
Sloppiness
Apathy
More quotes by William Safire
I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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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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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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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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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
William Safire
The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
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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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[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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The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
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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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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.
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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.
William Safire