Lend Me Your Ears ─ Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations

What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before. Mark Twain

Who said that...? ...is one of the key questions asked about quotations, even if, as Dorothy Parker once suggested, `We all assume that Oscar said it.'

I always have a quotation for everything---it saves original thinking. Dorothy Sayers

What's been said about this...? ...is, of course, the other frequently asked question. Winston Churchill saw positive value in this approach: "It is a good thing for an un-educated man to read books of quotations.'

Proper words in proper places. Jonathan Swift

Finding the right words...We may encounter quotations at any point in the daily torrent of words with which we are faced: in books, newspapers, films, television, or on the Internet. Oxford's quotations dictionaries allow you both to identify the quotation you have just met, and to find the words which perfectly express what you want to say.

For over 65 years, Oxford has been collecting, sourcing, researching, and authenticating quotations on an international scale. In doing so, it has created the rich language resource from which the Oxford `family' of quotations dictionaries derives. For more about quotations and links to useful online resources visit www.oup.com/uk/reference/resources/quotations

Since joining the BBC TV Current Affairs Department in 1956, Antony Jay has spent 50 years in the realm of government and politics as a television writer and producer. The journey has included the editorship of Tonight, writing the TV documentary Royal Family, and many programmes with David Frost, including the interviews with Harold Wilson in A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers. He was consultant producer to Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson, and John Major on their budget broadcasts.

His insights into bureaucracy come from an unhappy year as a senior executive in BBC TV, and two and a half entertaining ones on a government committee, the Annan Committee on the Future of Broadcasting. He got it all out of his system in the 1980s with Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.

Now he has pressed the fruits of his experience into a vintage fourth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations.

Antony Jay has spent 50 years travelling in the realms of government and politics as a television writer and producer. The journey has included the editorship of Tonight, writing the two royal TV documentaries Royal Family and Elizabeth R, and many programs with Sir David Frost, including the twelve interviews with Harold Wilson in A Prime Minister on Prime Ministers. He was a senior executive in BBC TV, and a member of the government's Annan Committee on the Future of Broadcasting. In the 1980s he wrote the hugely successful comedies Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.