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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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
Education
Steinbeck
Talking
Interviewing
Better
Professor
Professors
Novels
John
English
Novel
More quotes by William Safire
I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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
Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
William Safire
I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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
I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.
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
Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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
Have a definite opinion.
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.
William Safire
Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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
Never assume the obvious is true.
William Safire
A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
William Safire
Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
William Safire
The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
William Safire
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.
William Safire
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.
William Safire
Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
William Safire