The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

1.6 Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dahlberg, first Baron Acton) 1834-1902
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 3 April 1887, in Louise Creighton ‘Life and Letters of Mandell
Creighton’ (1904) vol. 1, ch. 13.
1.7 Abigail Adams 1744-1818
In the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you
would remember the ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors.
Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember all men would be
tyrants if they could.
Letter to John Adams, 31 March 1776
It is really mortifying, sir, when a woman possessed of a common share of understanding
considers the difference of education between the male and female sex, even in those families
where education is attended to...Nay why should your sex wish for such a disparity in those
whom they one day intend for companions and associates. Pardon me, sir, if I cannot help
sometimes s uspecting that this neglect arises in some measure from an ungenerous jealousy of
rivals near the throne.
Letter to John Thaxter, 15 February 1778
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still calm of life, or in the
repose of a pacific station, that great challenges are formed....Great necessities call out great
virtues.
Letter to John Quincy Adams, 19 January 1780
1.8 Charles Francis Adams 1807-86
It would be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war.
Dispatch to Earl Russell, 5 September 1863, in C. F. Adams ‘Charles Francis Adams’ (1900)
1.9 Douglas Adams 1952—
The Answer to the Great Question Of...Life, the Universe and
Everything...[is] Forty-two.
‘The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (1979) ch. 27
1.10 Frank Adams and Will M. Hough
I wonder who’s kissing her now.
Title of song (1909)
1.11 Franklin P. Adams 1881-1960
When the political columnists say ‘Every thinking man’ they mean themselves, and when
candidates appeal to ‘Every intelligent voter’ they mean everybody who is going to vote for them.
‘Nods and Becks’ (1944) p. 3