William Safire famous quotes

Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
-- William Safire

#Humility #Willing

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

#Tired #Needs #Nuance

When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
-- William Safire

#Impossible #Articulation #Rescue

Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
-- William Safire

#Perfect #Grammar

Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
-- William Safire

#Media #Choir #Used

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
-- William Safire

#Mean #Liberty #Doe

I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
-- William Safire

#Thinking #Needs

Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
-- William Safire

#Lasts #Cliche #Plague

Never assume the obvious is true.
-- William Safire

#Truth #Peer Pressure #Assuming

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

#Reading #Editing #Repetition

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

#Taken #Differences #Ransom

As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
-- William Safire

#Country #Long #Hungry

... 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

#Baby #Order #Roots

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

#Mind #Able #Companion

Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
-- William Safire

#Cat #Lines #Stories

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

#Earth #Realizing #Pleasure

The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.
-- William Safire

#Office #Firsts #First Lady

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

#Nice #Giving #Flying

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

#Littles #Ratios #Able

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

#President #May #Principles

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

#Hands #Want #Smoothies

The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
-- William Safire

#Sports #Ties #Perfect

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

#Ambition #Ideas #Boredom

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

#Winning #Political #Imperfect

Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
-- William Safire

#Gratitude #Appreciation #Knowing

I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
-- William Safire

#Color #Way #Welcome

What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
-- William Safire

#Media #Joy #Manipulation

When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
-- William Safire

#Needs #Looks #Dictionary

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

#Today

Do not put statements in the negative form. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. De-accession euphemisms. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
-- William Safire

#Editing #Long #Negative

Of higher value than any one leader is the cause.
-- William Safire

#Leader #Causes #Strategy

I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
-- William Safire

#Libertarian #Willing

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 his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine; a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate; a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
-- William Safire

#White #Giving #Culture

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
-- William Safire

#Writing #Long #Use

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.
-- William Safire

#Order #Judging #Style

No one flower can ever symbolize this nation. America is a bouquet....
-- William Safire

#Flower #America #Bouquets

Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
-- William Safire

#Quotation Marks #Mark #Quotations

Our rogue President, after selling face time...
-- William Safire

#Presidential #Rogues #Faces

Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
-- William Safire

#Writing #Mean #Two

Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
-- William Safire

#Men #Color #Mind

A man who lies, thinking it is the truth, is an honest man, and a man who tells the truth, believing it to be a lie, is a liar.
-- William Safire

#Liars #Lying #Believe

President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
-- William Safire

#Empathy #President #Politician

In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies; suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
-- William Safire

#Sweet #Peace #War

I was standing next to a famed geo-politician when the first news of the Argentine attack [on the Faulkland Islands] was received, and heard him muse incredulously: "An old-fashioned naval battle. A war between two civilized nations, perhaps with even a declaration of war, and later a peace conference. Wow." No hostages, no nukes, no ideologies, no religious fanaticism; just a fair-and-square war over national interests - hard to believe, in this day and age.
-- William Safire

#Religious #Peace #War

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.
-- William Safire

#Voice #Splits #Negative

The new, old, and constantly changing language of politics is a lexicon of conflict and drama?ridicule and reproach?pleading and persuasion.
-- William Safire

#Drama #Lexicon #Language

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.
-- William Safire

#Different #News #Opinion

Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
-- William Safire

#Writing #Nouns #Use

Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.
-- William Safire

#Looks #News #Stories

Have a definite opinion.
-- William Safire

#Opinion

If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
-- William Safire

#War #Winning #America

Don't expect others to do your work for you.
-- William Safire

#Work

To communicate, put your words in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
-- William Safire

#Order #Giving #Purpose

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.
-- William Safire

#Book #Yale #Editors

Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'
-- William Safire

#Politics #Motto #Gridlock

[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.
-- William Safire

#Class #Politics #Resentment

If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine, talk to yourself. We all do. But if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down, and then cut out the confusing parts.
-- William Safire

#Writing #Cutting #Thinking

A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
-- William Safire

#Book #Intellectual #Shapes

At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
-- William Safire

#Mean #People #Use

I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
-- William Safire

#Wings #Years #Pundits

One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.
-- William Safire

#Art #America #Challenges

Previously known for its six syllables of sweetness and light, reconciliation has become the political fighting word of the year.
-- William Safire

#Fighting #Years #Light

The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.
-- William Safire

#New York #Long #Wonderful

To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
-- William Safire

#Mind #Accused #Dummy

Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.
-- William Safire

#Taken #Jargon #Arcane

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
-- William Safire

#Ignorance #Care #Speech