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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
Years
Pundit
Pundits
Wing
Wings
Right
Many
More quotes by William Safire
Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
William Safire
Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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
Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
William Safire
The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
William Safire
You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
William Safire
The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
William Safire
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
William Safire
On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.
William Safire
Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.
William Safire
When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
William Safire
Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
William Safire
A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
William Safire
Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
William Safire
Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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.
William Safire
When duty calls, that is when character counts.
William Safire
A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
William Safire
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.
William Safire