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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.

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
Longer
Media
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Erudition
Shows
Choir
Used
Bare
Ruined
Sing
Writers

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One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.
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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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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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Have a definite opinion.
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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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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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George Washington had a tough second term.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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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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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.
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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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