William Lewis Safir Quotes
-
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.
-
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.
-
Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
-
Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
-
I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
-
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.
-
Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
-
Never assume the obvious is true.
-
Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
-
By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
-
At a certain point, what people mean when they use a word becomes its meaning.
-
To communicate, put your words in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
-
The perfect Christmas gift for a sportscaster, as all fans of sports clichés know, is a scoreless tie.
-
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
-
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.
-
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 . . .
-
Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
-
It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
[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.
-
A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
-
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.