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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
Writing
Noun
Nouns
Straight
Available
Quite
Use
Right
More quotes by William Safire
Have a definite opinion.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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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.
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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.
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
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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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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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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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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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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.
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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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.
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.
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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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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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[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.
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