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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

More quotes by William Safire

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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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Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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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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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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After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
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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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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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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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I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.
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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
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George Washington had a tough second term.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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