92+ William Safire Quotes On Education, Government And Language

William Safire was an American author, political commentator, and columnist. He was best known for his political column that appeared in the New York Times from 1973 to 2005. He was also a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon and a regular panelist on the television program, "The McLaughlin Group". Following is our collection on famous quotes by William Safire on education, leadership, love.

Top 10 William Safire Quotes

1. Never assume the obvious is true.
2. Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
3. 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.
4. When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
5. As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
6. The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
7. Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
8. The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia - "knowledge is power." Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you.
9. Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
10. Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

William Safire Image Quotes

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

William Safire Short Quotes

• Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
• Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
• Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
• Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
• By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
• What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
• The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
• At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
• The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.
• A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.

William Safire Quotes About Government

The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control. — William Safire

You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other. — William Safire

When your government, employer, landlord, merchant, banker and local sports team gang up to picture, digitize and permanently record your every activity, you are placed under unprecedented control. — William Safire

William Safire Quotes About Language

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

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

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

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

English is a stretch language; one size fits all. — William Safire

William Safire Quotes About Politics

Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.' — 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

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

[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

William Safire Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: "To hell with you. Offensive letter follows." — William Safire

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

Adjective salad is delicious, with each element contributing its individual and unique flavor; but a puree of adjective soup tastes yecchy. — 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

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

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

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. — 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

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

Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace. — 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

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

A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble. — 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

Your column is a pack of damn lies, a reader wrote to William Safire about a political piece he did in the New York Times.Brushing aside the stern criticism, Safire immediately debated whether it should be damn, the way it sounds, or damned, as the past participle of the verb, to damn. The ed on some words is simply slipping away, he points out. We're seeing more barbecue chicken, whip cream and corn beef. His conclusion: Ears are sloppy and eyes are precise; accordingly, speech can be loose but writing should be tight. — William Safire

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

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. — William Safire

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. — William Safire

I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels. — 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

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

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

Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks. — William Safire

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

When duty calls, that is when character counts. — William Safire

George Washington had a tough second term. — William Safire

If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself. — 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

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

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

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

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

The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking. — William Safire

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

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

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

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

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

It is in the nature of tyranny to deride the will of the people as the voice of the mob, and to denounce the cry for freedom as the roar of anarchy. — William Safire

Some handsome and ambitious men believe they are above all morality, and a woman's virtue becomes a mere challenge to them. — William Safire

Create your own constituency of the infuriated. — William Safire

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

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

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

Never feel guilty about reading, it's what you do to do your job. — William Safire

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

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

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. — 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

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

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

This is not some alarmist Orwellian scenario; it is here, now, financed by $20 billion last year and $15 billion more this year of federal money appropriated out of sheer fear. By creating the means to monitor 300 million visits to the United States yearly, this administration and a supine opposition are building a system capable of identifying, tracking and spying on 300 million Americans. — William Safire

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

Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had. — William Safire

Have a definite opinion. — William Safire

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

Life Lessons by William Safire

1. William Safire taught us to never give up, no matter what obstacles stand in our way. He worked hard to become a successful author and journalist, and he never stopped learning and growing.
2. He also showed us that it's important to be open to new ideas and perspectives, and to never be afraid to stand up for our beliefs.
3. Finally, William Safire taught us to always strive for excellence in everything we do, and to never settle for mediocrity.