Word: cliches
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...somewhat platitudinous manner (his favorite clichés are "let's walk around that idea" and "facts-not opinions") is apt to mislead strangers about the kind of businessman 54-year-old Donald Davis really is. No Horatio Alger up-from-nothing boy, he studied engineering at Michigan with the cold-blooded notion that he would avoid settling on any one career until he was 35. Living up to his credo, he shifted from senior engineer for a wheel company to cost accounting for a trust company to factory manager for an auto-accessory company which was making...
...hypocrisy and old-school stupidity which British rule has clamped over India for 150 years. To her, the British Raj hasn't changed since Kipling left the Punjab. To the Raj, India is still the cornerstone of the Empire and must be held at all costs. The timeworn clichés with which excesses and failings have been shrouded Miss Mitchell attacks with a Bryn-Mawrian vigor implemented with the background of nine years on the secretariat of the Institute of Pacific Relations...
Even his personal impressions of Joseph Stalin were made up of clichés, though he apparently was trying his old technique of extravagantly praising his international friends: "It is very fortunate for Russia to have this great, rugged war chief . . . massive and strong personality . . . inexhaustible courage . . , direct and even blunt in speech . . . saving sense of humor . . . deep, cool wisdom and complete absence of illusion...
...even broader satire, its jumble of incident, its rush of events. There was no need to treat the theme solemnly. But there was no need to take all the guts and sinew out of it, to make every character an exaggeration, every action a stencil, every speech a cliché-and then bathe the entire scene in a lurid purple light. But all these faults don't make it dull. It has as much kick as a decanter of bad whiskey...
...Nobody expects them to. Most reporters would be shaken to the depths of their propriety if such a visitor should square off with an extended account of "I said to the President" and "the President said to me." Nevertheless, the emerging visitors are invariably queried; nevertheless, their dutiful clichés are carefully recorded: we had an interesting discussion . . . you can say it was an exchange of views . . . we explored the situation. . . . I am in complete agreement...