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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'

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
Gridlock
Motto
Stand
Politics
Great
Something

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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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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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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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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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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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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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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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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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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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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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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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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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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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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
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The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.
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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
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