Quote

Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.

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
Element
Adjective
Elements
Adjectives
Unique
Salad
Taste
Contributing
Individual
Tastes
Flavor
Soup
Delicious

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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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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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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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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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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
William Safire
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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
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The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.
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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 look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
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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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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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The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
William Safire
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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
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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.
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No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire