Product Description

This revised new edition provides more than 4,500 quotations, covering the people, events, and ideas of some 2,500 years of politics: the inspiring speeches and the disastrous gaffes. Antony Jay has selected the best sayings of and about politicians both past and present, ranging from Karl Marx to George W. Bush and Elizabeth I to Ken Livingstone, and touching on subjects as diverse as warfare, nationalism, honesty, and the ever-sensitive issue of taxation. Newspaper headlines, Slogans, and other special categories are grouped together for easier access, and an extensive index helps you to find out who really said that half-remembered phrase. With the addition of Sound bites of 2000-3, events covered include the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the enlargement of the European Union. Just when we thought it was safe to go back in the water, the sharks are circling again - anonymous British Cabinet Minister on the forthcoming report of the European Convention. States like these...constitute an axis of evil - George W. Bush. I wasn't even in the index - Edwina Currie, on John Major's autobiography. You know what some people call us: the nasty party - Theresa May. A good day to bury bad news - summary of Jo Moore's email of 11 September 2001. You don't look tall if you surround yourself by short grasses - Michael Portillo on Iain Duncan Smith. Entitlement cards will not be compulsory, but everyone will have to have one - John Prescott. There is no list, and Syria isn't on it - Jack Straw.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1020927 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 516 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The second edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations was brought out in time for the UK's 2001 election. It's fortunate to have as its editor Antony Jay, most famous as joint author of Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister, also extremely experienced as writer and broadcaster, whose work has so often focused on the political arena. He has obviously used his contacts well. To take but one example, the source for Israeli diplomat Abba Eban's verdict on the British Foreign Office, "A hotbed of cold feet," is given as "in conversation with Antony Jay". The editor's erudition is usefully employed in numerous brief notes which supply the contexts that make sense of many important remarks that would otherwise be lost on less learned readers. "Epitaphs", "Last Words", "Misquotations", "Slogans" and six other piquant categories have their own handy special sections.

The ranks of those quoted stretch from ancient luminaries such as Aristophanes, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius to modern novelists--Anthony Burgess, for example: "The US presidency is a Tudor monarchy plus telephones"--via an eclectic selection of notables including Sojourner Truth and Jane Austen--"From politics, it was an easy step to silence". Politicians and political philosophers from the English-speaking world get their full due. All the greats have extensive sections under their names, most particularly Churchill, Disraeli, Burke, Bagehot, Jefferson and Lincoln. The flipside of this Anglo-American focus is the brevity of the entries for continental Europeans. When a minor British celebrity such as the late Alan Clark gets nine quotations to Boris Yeltsin's two and Gorbachev's three, and Disraeli's selection outnumbers Karl Marx's by 98 quotes to 13, one wonders if things might not have been differently weighted. English Eurosceptics may applaud. With over 4,500 quotations to graze through, however--in all other respects masterfully selected, it would be churlish to complain. --David Pickering

Daily Mail
"Completely captures the comic aspect of politics while still presenting some serious messages ... It is hard to stop browsing once you start"

Financial Times
"This reader devoured it from cover to cover, discovering ... some excellent and unfamiliar quotations ... it fills a serious gap."

Customer Reviews

Very good
Pages 1 to 428 of this paperback book consist of a number of quotations relating to politics taken from politicians, classic writers, journalists, playwrights, philosophers and so on. This is arranged on an alphabetic basis. Pages 429-541 consist of a keyword index.

For example, if I was looking for quotation involving he word 'prayer', I turn to the keyword index and find that there are three listed.

One of these entries is "one prayer absorbs all others" GLAD 159:6.

I then turn to page 159 to find Gladstone's quotation:

This gives:

"one prayer absorbs all others: Ireland, Ireland, Ireland." Diary 10 April 1887.

Alternatively, I can look up the names of famous people and see if there are any quotations from them.

For example, Charles Dickens has seven quotations attributed to him such as this one:

"it's always best on these occasions to do what the mob do". "But suppose there are two mobs?", suggested Mr Snodgrass. "Shout with the largest", replied Mr Pickwick. Pickwick Papers (1837).