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Sarcastic Quotes

143QUOTES

Sarcastic quotes with a sting in the tail, from Aristophanes and Voltaire to Ambrose Bierce, H. L. Mencken and Churchill, each checked to its source.

Society is now one polish'd horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

Lord Byron · Don Juan, canto XIII, st. 95

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the best recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.

Fyodor Dostoevsky · The Idiot (1869), pt. 3

A perverse destiny has seemed to brood over the Rt. Hon. Gentleman’s career; all his life has been one long struggle to overcome the natural amiability of his character.

Winston Churchill · House of Commons, 25 May 1925

Ours is composed of the scum of the earth—the mere scum of the earth.

Duke of Wellington · The source reads: “Ours [our army] is composed of the scum of the earth—the mere scum of the earth.” · Of his army

Stop abusing my verses, or publish some of your own.

Martial · Epigrams, I, 91

Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own.

W. S. Gilbert · The Mikado (1885), act I

Marriage, n. a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Ambrose Bierce · The Devil's Dictionary (1906)

Men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

Henry David Thoreau · Life Without Principle (1863)

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

Plato · Republic, VII, 531–E

Cynic, n. a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.

Ambrose Bierce · The Devil's Dictionary (1906)

To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it on again.

Attributed to Arturo Toscanini · On Richard Strauss agreeing to write music for the 1936 Olympics

Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.

Groucho Marx · His telegram resigning from a Hollywood club, first reported by columnist Erskine Johnson in October 1949 about the Friars Club and retold in his memoir.

Mediocre people have an answer for everything and are astonished at nothing.

Eugène Delacroix · Journal (February 25, 1852)

It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.

Evelyn Waugh · The source reads: “Randolph Churchill went into hospital… to have a lung removed. It was announced that the trouble was not "malignant."… It was a typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.” · Diaries (March 1964), of Randolph Churchill

Organized crime is just the dirty side of the sharp dollar.

Raymond Chandler · The Long Goodbye (1953), ch. 48

He can run, but he can’t hide.

Joe Louis · Remark before his heavyweight title fight with Billy Conn (June 19, 1946)

No graven images may be Worshipped, except the currency.

Arthur Hugh Clough · The Latest Decalogue (1862), l. 3

The wisest fool in Christendom.

Attributed to Henri IV · Said of James I of England

Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science.

Thomas Carlyle · Latter Day Pamphlets, no. 1 (1850), of economists

You're a corpse, and you don't know it. Go get yourself buried.

Edna Ferber · The source reads: “You're through in pictures, and plays, and vaudeville, and radio, and everything! You're a corpse, and you don't know it. Go get yourself buried.” · Dinner at Eight (1932), act III, sc. ii

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

Martin Luther · Table Talk (1569)

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and gives in the long run a net result of zero.

Thomas Carlyle · Chartism (1839), ch. 6

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other.

Voltaire · Dictionnaire Philosophique. Money

He is a man of splendid abilities, but utterly corrupt. He shines and stinks like rotten mackerel by moonlight.

John Randolph · Of Edward Livingston

Frequently asked questions

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143 quotes, dealt in a fresh order every day, so the page reads differently each morning, and every quote keeps its own page.

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