William Safire Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.”
-- William Safire -
“Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.”
-- William Safire -
“When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.”
-- William Safire -
“Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.”
-- William Safire -
“Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.”
-- William Safire -
“The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.”
-- William Safire -
“I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.”
-- William Safire -
“Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.”
-- William Safire -
“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.”
-- William Safire -
“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 -
“As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.”
-- William Safire -
“... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root; F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.”
-- William Safire -
“A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.”
-- William Safire -
“Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.”
-- William Safire -
“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.”
-- William Safire -
“The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.”
-- William Safire -
“The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .”
-- William Safire -
“Create your own constituency of the infuriated.”
-- William Safire -
“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 -
“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 -
“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.”
-- William Safire -
“The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.”
-- William Safire -
“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.”
-- William Safire -
“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 -
“Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.”
-- William Safire -
“I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.”
-- William Safire -
“What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.”
-- William Safire -
“When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.”
-- William Safire -
“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.”
-- William Safire
