Release date 03/12/2004

Favourite quotation revealed!

EMBARGOED UNTIL 00.01hrs 03 DECEMBER 2004

Words of wisdom for the world's despair?

The public seem to be more concerned about current affairs worldwide than their own personal issues. They voted for Edmund Burke's 'It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph' as their favourite quotation.

Running a close second in the voting was 'Tread softly because you tread on my dreams' by William Butler Yeats.

To mark the launch of a major new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Oxford University Press posted a list of one hundred of the most resonant quotations in the book on AskOxford, (www.askoxford.com). Visitors to the site whittled the list down to a 'Top Ten' and then the public was invited to vote for their favourite quotation by email and by postcard.

Great response to poll

Over 900 votes were registered, one from as far away as Sri Lanka, testifying to the wide appeal of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.

Elizabeth Knowles, editor of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, said 'We often think of today as a sound bite culture, but a survey like this reminds us that personal expressions of key ideas can reach across centuries, to give us just the words we want today.'

The Top Ten favourite quotations:

20% It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph - Edmund Burke (attributed, not found in his writings)

15% Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. - William Butler Yeats, 1899

12% Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. - John Donne, 1624

11% Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by. - Robert Frost, 1916

9% I have a dream. - Martin Luther King, 1963

8% Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. - Lord Acton, 1887

8% To lose one parent...may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. - Oscar Wilde, 1895

6% If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you. - Rudyard Kipling, 1910

5% It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, 1813

5% Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety nine per cent perspiration. - Thomas Alva Edison, c.1903

Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is priced £30 hardback

For more information about Oxford Quotations, go to www.askoxford.com/worldofwords/quotations

To interview Elizabeth Knowles, please contact Sarah Kidd on 01865 353911 or email sarah.kidd@oup.com

Since it was first published in 1941, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has celebrated its diamond jubilee as the nation's favourite collection of quotations. This sixth edition includes a history of this iconic book and the Introduction to the first edition. Oxford Quotations continually monitor the language.

New material includes not only high-profile utterances of the last few years but also, and excitingly, quotations from an earlier time which have acquired new resonance.

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education in its worldwide publishing. The preparation of dictionaries, of all types and for all ages, has been a central part of its activities for more than 100 years.

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