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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.

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
Better
Jerks
Knee
Jerk
Knees

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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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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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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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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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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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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.
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.
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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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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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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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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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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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Never assume the obvious is true.
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