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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.

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
Becomes
Word
Point
Use
Certain
Mean
People
Meaning

More quotes by William Safire

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Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.
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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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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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When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and permanently record your every activity, you are placed under unprecedented control.
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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.
William Safire
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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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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.
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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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Some handsome and ambitious men believe they are above all morality, and a woman's virtue becomes a mere challenge to them.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
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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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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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George Washington had a tough second term.
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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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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
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