John Dickerson Quotes

Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,--to be intelligently simple.

I wish my prose to be transparent—I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.

No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

The real leader redefines or defines the mission in a very powerful way so that people understand it; it permeates the organization.

Misunderstanding must be nakedly exposed before true understanding can begin to flourish.

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. Ludwig Wittgenstein

Obscurity is never a virtue.

Uncommon things must be said in common words.

Easy writing makes hard reading.

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.

Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.

When you speak openly and honestly, you won't have to make assumptions. The day you stop making assumptions, you will communicate cleanly and clearly, and achieve impeccability with your word.

Sometimes one has to say difficult things, but one ought to say them as simply as one knows how.

Accept complete responsibility both for understanding and for being understood.

My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

It is always better to ask then to make an assumption.

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.

Like with anything, good writing suggest itself pretty strongly.

My writing model is my mother, who is a writer as well. She always valued clarity and simplicity above all else. If someone doesn't understand what you're writing, then everything else you do is superfluous. Irrelevant. If any thoughtful, curious reader finds what I do impenetrable, I've failed.

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

Simplicity is all. Simple logic, simple arguments, simple visual images. If you can't reduce your argument to a few crisp words and phrases, there's something wrong with your argument. There's nothing long-winded about 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité'.

Get to the heart of what is before you and continue to express yourself as logically as possible.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.