Quote

To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.

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
Purpose
Words
Seduce
Use
Instruct
Order
Seducing
Give
Persuade
Giving
Clarity
Discover
Communicate

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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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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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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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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
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Have a definite opinion.
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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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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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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
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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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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia - knowledge is power. Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you.
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To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
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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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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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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
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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.
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