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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.

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
Rule
Fun
Knowing
Breaking

More quotes by William Safire

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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
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To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.
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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.
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The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
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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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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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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.
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To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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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.
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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.
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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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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
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George Washington had a tough second term.
William Safire