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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
Breaking
Rule
Fun
Knowing

More quotes by William Safire

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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
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
William Safire
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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
William Safire
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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
William Safire
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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.
William Safire
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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
William Safire
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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
William Safire
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
William Safire
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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
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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.
William Safire
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In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'
William Safire
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
William Safire
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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
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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.
William Safire
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
William Safire