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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
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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The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
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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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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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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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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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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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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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The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.
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Have a definite opinion.
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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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.
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This is what it's all about. From what I could see, you could get a bunch of people together, whip up the press and have some impact.
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Never assume the obvious is true.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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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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Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy.
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
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