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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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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
Need
Needs
Think
Thinking

More quotes by William Safire

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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
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.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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George Washington had a tough second term.
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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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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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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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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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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.
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.
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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.
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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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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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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
William Safire
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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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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
William Safire
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
William Safire
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On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.
William Safire