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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.

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
Guilty
Reading
Jobs
Feel
Feels
Never

More quotes by 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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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
William Safire
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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
William Safire
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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.
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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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
William Safire
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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.
William Safire
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
William Safire
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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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Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
William Safire
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After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
William Safire
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Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
William Safire
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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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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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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A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
William Safire