Favourite Quotation Revealed!

Favourite Quotation Revealed!

OXFORD, England, December 3/PRNewswire/ --

- Words of wisdom for the world's despair?



Are the public more concerned about current affairs worldwide than their
own personal issues? A fifth of all pollsters 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 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 its website, 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 soundbite 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 GBP30 hardback



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



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.



Source: Oxford University Press

To interview Elizabeth Knowles, please contact Sarah Kidd on +44(0)1865-353911 or email sarah.kidd@oup.com


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