William Safire Quotes

51 quotes in 716 categories

• Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
• Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
• Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
• The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
• 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…
• Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
• It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
• No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet....
• Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
• Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
• Our rogue President, after selling face time...
• Decide on some imperfect Somebody and you will win, because the truest truism in politics is: You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.
• 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',…
• ... 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.
• A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
• Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
• Have a definite opinion.
• If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
• Don't expect others to do your work for you.
• 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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