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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.
William Safire
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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
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Journalist
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New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
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More quotes by William Safire
As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
William Safire
The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia - knowledge is power. Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
William Safire
Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
William Safire
Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
William Safire
No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
William Safire
Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
William Safire
Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
William Safire
When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
William Safire
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
William Safire