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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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
Shape
Subject
Shapes
Intellectual
Subjects
Heft
Comes
Primaries
Book
Primary
Dealing
More quotes by William Safire
English is a stretch language one size fits all.
William Safire
Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
William Safire
When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Don't expect others to do your work for you.
William Safire
By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
William Safire
Some handsome and ambitious men believe they are above all morality, and a woman's virtue becomes a mere challenge to them.
William Safire
The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
William Safire
Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
William Safire
President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
William Safire
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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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
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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.
William Safire
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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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire
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
Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
William Safire
Never assume the obvious is true.
William Safire
