Over 12,600 quotations

This collection is the ideal place to answer all your quotation questions. You can discover which of over 3,000 authors said that tantalising phrase, or you can search over 600 subjects to find an apt quotation for any occasion. You can listen to Harper Lee on Technology and Leon Trotsky on Art, or Demosthenes on Opportunity and J.K. Rowling on Parents. This is your chance to find out just who said ‘Imagination is the highest kite that can fly’, ‘We must be the change we wish to see in the world’, or ‘Failure is not an option’.

Oxford Essential Quotations ensures coverage of the most popular and widely-used quotations by combining use of the largest ongoing language research programme in the world, the Oxford English Corpus, with the acclaimed text of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and enhances these with a selection of less well-known but equally memorable contemporary sayings. In this fourth edition, over 180 subjects have been updated with new quotations from over 200 authors, including over 70 new authors ranging from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Angela Merkel, from Zhou Enlai to St Joan of Arc.