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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
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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
Sometimes
Tired
Flatters
Feels
Meaning
Readership
Needs
Especially
Nuance
Perhaps
Unfamiliar
Term
Exquisite
Word
Sensitivity
Need
Precise
Feel
Poetic
More quotes by William Safire
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 . . .
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
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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.'
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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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.
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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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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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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.
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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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.
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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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