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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
William Safire
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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
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New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
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More quotes by William Safire
[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.
William Safire
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
At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
William Safire
President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Don't expect others to do your work for you.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
William Safire
No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet.
William Safire
Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire
A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
William Safire
The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.
William Safire
Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
William Safire
A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
William Safire
By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
William Safire
If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
William Safire
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
It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
William Safire