Quote

Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.

William Safire

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Six
Year
Word
Known
Fighting
Syllables
Political
Previously
Light
Reconciliation
Become
Sweetness

More quotes by William Safire

Image
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
Image
Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
William Safire
Image
[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.
William Safire
Image
Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.
William Safire
Image
To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
William Safire
Image
President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
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
Image
One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
William Safire
Image
No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
Image
The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .
William Safire
Image
In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'
William Safire
Image
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.
William Safire