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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
Morality
Mere
Becomes
Challenges
Virtue
Woman
Handsome
Believe
Ambitious
Men
Challenge

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Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.
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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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A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
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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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Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
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[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.
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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.'
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