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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.

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
Audience
President
Befits
Rhetorical
Reagan
Empathy
Seeking
Politician

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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.
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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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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
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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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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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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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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.
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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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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
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The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
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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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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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