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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.
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
Anarchy
Tyranny
Cry
Freedom
Voice
Nature
Deride
People
Denounce
Roar
More quotes by William Safire
Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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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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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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
Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
William Safire
It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
William Safire
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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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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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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Some handsome and ambitious men believe they are above all morality, and a woman's virtue becomes a mere challenge to them.
William Safire
Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire