Oxford Dictionary Quotes

#1. Don't you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything.

David Bowie

#2. I have six or seven 'what to name the baby' books, the Oxford dictionary of names, and a fabulous tome that's 26 languages in simultaneous translation - French, German, all the European majors, plus Esperanto, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, and so on.

Melanie Rawn

#3. The New Oxford Dictionary has declared Sarah Palin's word 'refudiate' to be the 2010 Word of the Year. Palin was honored and said she would do her best to 'dismangle' the English language.

Conan O'Brien

#4. In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it. A few feet from that chalkboard is a copy of the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, to which I refer frequently as a source of ideas and word roots.

Neal Stephenson

#5. Basic dictionaries no longer belong on paper; the greatest, the 'Oxford English Dictionary,' has nimbly remade itself in cyberspace, where it has doubled in size and grown more timely and usable than ever.

James Gleick

#6. My head was spinning. I could think of nothing better to calm it down than the Oxford English Dictionary.

Alan Bradley

#7. The irony of this endeavor is palpable, for English itself is a hopeless hodgepodge of other tongues, with more exceptions than rules, more chaos than order, and enough new words created each day to keep the Oxford English Dictionary folks very, very busy.

George Takei

#8. In all sorts of government man is made to believe himself free, and to be in chains.

Stanislaw Leszczynski

#9. Books provide a handy shorthand when Rory's mostly MIA father, Christopher, is first introduced to viewers. Christopher's offer to buy Rory the Compact Oxford English Dictionary she covets is sincere; his lack of ability to follow through on his good intentions is Christopher in a nutshell.

Jennifer Crusie

#10. [Acknowledgments] I recommend them all for further reading, but when you're finished, you may have to read several of my books and watch a lot of TV just to get stupid enough to function in the modern world again.

Christopher Moore

#11. On the analogy of 'Dictionary Johnson,' we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), 'Quotationeer Shapiro.' ... Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett's and Oxford's.

William Safire

#12. The gadget had come with The New Oxford American Dictionary preloaded. You only had to begin typing your word and the Kindle found it for you. It was, he thought, TiVo for bookworms.

Stephen King

#13. The Oxford English Dictionary is the greatest work of reference ever written, and it's largely the result of a Scotsman who left school at fourteen, and a criminally insane American.

Mark Forsyth

#14. Ludicrous concepts ... like the whole idea of a war on terrorism. You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?

Terry Jones

#15. Military glory
that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood
that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy ...

Abraham Lincoln

#16. If that doesn't seem dominant enough, consider the fact that the word "google" is now an official entry in the Oxford English Dictionary - as a verb.

Peter Thiel

#17. Job change is a very crucial decision. This decision can make or break your career.

Abhishek Ratna

#18. How come "burbled" gets to be in the Oxford English Dictionary but "tulgy" doesn't? Hm?

Mike Tucker

#19. For my Oxford degree, I had to translate French and German philosophy (as it turned out, Descartes and Kant) at sight without a dictionary. That meant Germany for my first summer vacation, to learn the thorny language on my own.

Paul Engle

#20. Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.

Walker Percy

#21. Locavore" may have been the 2007 New Oxford American Dictionary Word of the Year, but there's already been a word for those whose diets are restricted to seasonal items grown in their immediate area: That word is "peasant.

Brett Martin

#22. I have lived in Cornwall from the age of 4, so I have always been aware of the artistic heritage that the county has. I feel very proud to be able to connect to this.

John Dyer

#23. When Shiva beats his DAMRU- Evil Shakes !! while the Wise Awakes!

True Krishna Priya

#24. An end to timidity - the replacement of the philologically tentative by the lexicographically decisive. - on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary

Simon Winchester

#25. Secrecy in science does not work. Withholding information does more damage to us than to our competitors.

Edward Teller

#26. And then, one morning, you're startled to discover that you no longer feel this terrible burden. What a surprise to notice that the angst has disappeared. Why on that particular day? Why not later, or sooner? It's the totalitarian decision of our body.

David Foenkinos

#27. The idea is to do out-of-the-box films that showcase my versatility and talent.

Vir Das