Quote

The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.

William Safire

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Gift
Fans
Sports
Perfect
Sportscaster
Clich
Ties
Christmas

More quotes by William Safire

Image
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
Image
You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
William Safire
Image
No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
Image
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
Image
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
Image
On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.
William Safire
Image
President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
William Safire
Image
Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire
Image
What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
William Safire
Image
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.
William Safire
Image
Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
William Safire
Image
I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
William Safire
Image
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.
William Safire
Image
The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
William Safire
Image
Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
William Safire
Image
The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
William Safire
Image
Never assume the obvious is true.
William Safire
Image
I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
William Safire
Image
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.
William Safire
Image
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.
William Safire