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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.
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
Differences
Pays
Taken
Cash
American
French
United
France
Hostages
States
Pay
Appeasement
Back
Arms
Ransom
Difference
Hostage
Gets
Additional
More quotes by William Safire
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.
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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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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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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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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
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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 perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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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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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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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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Have a definite opinion.
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Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
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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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Never assume the obvious is true.
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Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.
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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
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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.
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