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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

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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
William Safire
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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
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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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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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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
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A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
William Safire
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
William Safire
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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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Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
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.
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.
William Safire
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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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 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.
William Safire
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
William Safire
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
William Safire
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire