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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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
Running
Government
Roughshod
Lopsided
Side
Sides
More quotes by William Safire
At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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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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[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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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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Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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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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We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.
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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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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.
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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.
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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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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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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