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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
Right
Writing
Noun
Nouns
Straight
Available
Quite
Use
More quotes by William Safire
I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
William Safire
I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
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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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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
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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If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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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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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
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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.
William Safire
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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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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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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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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 . . .
William Safire
