Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (Oxford Paperback Reference)

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