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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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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
Available
Quite
Use
Right
Writing
Noun
Nouns
Straight

More quotes by 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.
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Have a definite opinion.
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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.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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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.
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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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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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The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
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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.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
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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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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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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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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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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.
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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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