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George Washington had a tough second term.

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
Washington
Tough
Second
Term
George

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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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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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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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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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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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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
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Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
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Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job.
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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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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
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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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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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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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