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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.

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
Impossible
Comes
Articulation
Rescue

More quotes by William Safire

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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
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
William Safire
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Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
William Safire
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
William Safire
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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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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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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
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
William Safire
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... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
William Safire
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
William Safire
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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
William Safire
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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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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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
William Safire
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire