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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
Stand
Politics
Great
Something
Gridlock
Motto

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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
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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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Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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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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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
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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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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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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.
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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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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 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.
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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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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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