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The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.

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
Constantly
Drama
Conflict
Lexicon
Politics
Pleading
Language
Reproach
Persuasion
Ridicule
Changing

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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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Have a definite opinion.
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It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy.
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Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
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I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.
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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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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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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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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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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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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.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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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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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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