Here readers will find Franklin D. Roosevelt ("The only thing we have to fear is fear itself") and Martin Luther King, Jr. ("Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"). There are numerous excerpts from works of art, from Franz Kafka's "It is often better to be in chains than to be free", to Cole Porter's "In olden days a glimpse of stocking / Was looked on as something shocking / Now, heaven knows, / Anything Goes". Knowles includes memorable flashes of wit, such as Dorothy Parker's "Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses". And here too are the words of the notorious, such as Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook". In addition, the book features several special sections, including Misquotations, Newspaper Headlines ("Dewey defeats Truman"), Political Slogans ("Ban the Bomb"), Film lines ("Let the force be with you"), and Anonymous ("Kilroy was here"). All quotations are organized alphabetically by author, and there are two indexes -- a subject index and a key word index -- to help readers find quotes when they don't know the author or when they need a quote to suit an occasion.

The Oxford Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Quotations opens a unique window on our time, offering a panorama that is by turns amusing, appalling, uplifting, and memorable.