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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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
Wings
Right
Many
Years
Pundit
Pundits
Wing
More quotes by William Safire
When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
William Safire
The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
William Safire
We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.
William Safire
I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
William Safire
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
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.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
William Safire
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
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.
William Safire
The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
William Safire
The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.
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
Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
William Safire
One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.
William Safire
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.
William Safire