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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.

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
Woman
Handsome
Believe
Ambitious
Men
Challenge
Morality
Mere
Becomes
Challenges
Virtue

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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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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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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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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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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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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
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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.
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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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One difference between French appeasement and American appeasement is that France pays ransom in cash and gets its hostages back while the United States pays ransom in arms and gets additional hostages taken.
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
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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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Never assume the obvious is true.
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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.
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