Most Ironic Quotes & Sayings

It is pretty ironic that the so-called 'least advanced' people are the ones taking the lead in trying to protect all of us, while the richest and most powerful among us are the ones who are trying to drive the society to destruction. — Noam Chomsky

One of the most difficult and ironic murder weapons is the life jacket. — Demetri Martin

It's ironic when black non-Muslims say Islam is not a religion that uplifts black people when two of the most celebrated black heroes in recent history were both Muslim; Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. — Habeeb Akande

I've been working on issues of poverty for more than 20 years, and so it's ironic that the problem that and question that I most grapple with is how you actually define poverty. What does it mean? — Jacqueline Novogratz

There is something ironic in prejudice against the disabled and their families, because their plight might befall anybody. Straight men are unlikely to wake up gay one morning, and white children don't become black; but any of us could be disabled in an instant. People with disabilities make up the largest minority in America; they constitute 15 percent of the population, though only 15 percent of those were born with their disability and about a third are over sixty-five. Worldwide, some 550 million people are disabled. The disability-rights scholar Tobin Siebers has written, The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disablity, and that only if you are among the most fortunate. — Andrew Solomon

The most important thing in life is style. That is the style of one s existence the characteristic mode of one s actions is basically ultimately what matters. For if man defines himself by doing then style is doubly definitive because style describes the doing. The point is this happiness is a learned condition. And since it is learned and self generating it does not depend upon external circumstances for its perpetuation. This throws a very ironic light on content. And underscores the primacy of style. It is content or rather the consciousness of content that fills the void. But the mere presence of content is not enough. It is style that gives content the capacity to absorb us to move us it is style that makes us care. — Tom Robbins

Sixty percent of all Indians live in urban areas, but nobody's writing about them. They're really an underrepresented population, and the ironic thing is very, very few of those we call Native American writers actually grew up on reservations, and yet most of their work is about reservations. — Sherman Alexie

Which is mightily ironic since one of the most common criticisms of American women novelists (it's a load of crap but it gets bandied about a good bit) is that they don't write the "big" stories about "universal" or "worldly" concepts ... Jesus. Um, when we do? We get told to get back in the kitchen and bedroom - go back to writing about love-y wife-y mother-y things. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I gloomily came to the ironic conclusion that if you take a highly intelligent person and give them the best possible, elite education, then you will most likely wind up with an academic who is completely impervious to reality. — Halton Arp

What I found most ironic is that the safest part for us as journalists was during the actual war. Back then, during that stage of fighting, we were not targets. After the war itself, during the first month or two, it was extremely safe. We could go anywhere in Iraq, talk to anyone, and didn't have to worry about anything. — Yaroslav Trofimov

Most of all, Violet will know the smile: a slow and confident widening of a too-abundant mouth. This woman is something more than beautiful, something alchemical, an unstable mixture of rare elements bound together by nerve and charm. Am I interrupting something dreadfully important? she asks, with the ironic warmth of a woman who knows in her bones that she is always the most important object in the room. — Beatriz Williams

Guston tacked toward celebrating the crap of life not for its own ironic sake, but as the ever-present still life that surrounds the embarrassingly, even tragically human. No Duchampian object is ever tragic. Many if not most of Guston's objects, even the most hilarious, are. — Ross Feld

It's ironic really, that the man who hates the world is most loved by it — Anna Todd

The most annoying thing I found was all the people pretending to be me on MySpace and Facebook. I'm not a member of either, but apparently there is an 'official' Nikki Sanderson MySpace page, complete with rants about how terrible identity fraud is, which is ironic. — Nikki Sanderson

It is ironic that Einsteins most creative work, the general theory of relativity, should boil down to conceptualizing space as a medium when his original premise [in special relativity] was that no such medium existed [..] ... — Robert B. Laughlin

Art that samples other art, quotes that quote other quotes--your writer knows this phenomenon, in jargon 'he's aware', he was raised in a culture of (not more ironic jargon, select only the most appropriate gustatory analogy): regurgitation, a culture of glutting to vomit and glutting again on the vomit until reemesis--chunky cheese mimesis--then licking that puddle again. — Joshua Cohen

Maggie Smith has a unique sense of comedy, based on a somewhat ironic view of real life, making it both funnier and more sad. But perhaps her greatest ability, or at least the one that most intrigues me, is how she can convey deep and powerful emotion without a trace of sentimentality. — Julian Fellowes

It is ironic that the United States should have been founded by intellectuals, for throughout most of our political history, the intellectual has been for the most part either an outsider, a servant or a scapegoat. — Richard Hofstadter

Most of us would like to see our enemies defeated and punished, and it is an ironic (and gruesome) human truth that many of us unconsciously entertain the same feeling about our friends and the members of our family. For there is a curious ambivalence about the human soul: it can love and hate the same object at the same time with almost equal force. Society suspects this. It half realizes that civilization is perpetually menaced because of this primary hostility of men toward one another. Therefore, culture has to summon every possible reinforcement against these aggressive hatreds. Hence the ideal command to love one's neighbor as oneself. This commandment is the strongest defense against human hatred, and even though it is impossible to fulfill it completely, men cling to it. For they unconsciously realize that if this commandment were to be swept away, the world would be a place of chaos and desolation. — Joshua Loth Liebman

It's ironic that people speak of artists as dreamers. I think they are the most grounded people around. Conscious and present. As an artist, you really see life, connect with its beauty, and create something that shares those observations with others. You notice things. — Danny Gregory

It's ironic: In movies, the most successful films of all time have been sci-fi or fantasy. By far. But a lot of people won't even read science fiction books. — David S.Goyer

It's ironic, isn't it, that one day you're one of the most conservative members, and then some individual gets mad at you, and they decide to throw millions of dollars against you because you didn't vote exactly the way they want every day. — James Lankford

The Transformation from Chrysalis can take weeks, months or even years- mine took one year. And although I have become this person, I'm still in the midst of a Larger transformation, one that I won't recognize until I look back at me now and say"who was that girl?" We are constantly evolving; I suppose I have always known that, but because I always knew that, I feared stopping, and it is Ironic that it was only when I finally stopped that i moved the most. I know now that we never truly stop, our Journey is never complete, because we will continue to flourish- just as when the caterpillar thought the world was Over, it became a Butterfly. — Cecelia Ahern

It was ironic, but when you scratched the surface, most successful men were working for one thing only
to retire
and the sooner the better. Whereas women were the complete opposite. She had never heard a woman say she was working so she could retire to a desert island or to live on a boat. It was probably, she thought, because most women didn't think they deserved to do nothing. — Candace Bushnell

Most of the ideas I've gotten for novels or screenplays have occurred to me while I was either shaving or taking a bath. A number have occurred to me while I was driving 127. I rarely get ideas when seated in front of my typewriter, which I find ironic because I have always suspected that typing somehow plays a key role in writing. — Gary Reilly

Life wants you to serve something more than yourself. When you serve something more than yourself, you are served. It's the most ironic thing in the world. — Tony Robbins

This world made by humans for themselves is most unfriendly towards humans. What irony. — Pooja Perumal

It struck Magda as ironic that those who professed to want peace the most were quickest to use bloodshed to try to get their way. — Terry Goodkind

One ironic thing is that although (the Soviet Union) was one of the most oppressive systems, with no respect for the individual, it somehow produced the freest hockey on the planet. These guys, when they got on the ice, it was like watching jazz. They could do anything. I find that a paradox. It's interesting because I think the North American style was a lot less free. It was not encouraged to be creative. — Gabe Polsky

There are people, particularly in the United States with which I am most familiar, who would say how ironic that Tehran would be the sponsor of an anti-terrorism conference, because there are people who say that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. — Cynthia McKinney

My world on the road always ends up feeling really small which is ironic because that's when I'm seeing the most places and meeting the most people! — Tyler Hilton

But mostly, I remembered what I've always believed. What my mom taught me. That while some things are just plain awful, most things in life can be seen either tragic or comic. And it's your choice. Is life a big, long, tiresome slog from sadness to regret to guilt to resentment to self-pity? Or is life weird, outrageous, bizarre, ironic, and just stupid?
Gotta go with stupid.
It's not the easy way out. Self-pity is the easiest thing in the world. Finding the humor, the irony, the slight justification for a skewed, skeptical optimism, that's tough. — Katherine Applegate

It is ironic enough to see sentiments of the most sublime self-denial invoked in support of spoliation itself. See to what this boasted disinterestedness tends! These men who are so fantastically delicate as not to desire peace itself, if it is founded on the vile interest of mankind, put their hand into the pockets of others, and especially of the poor. — Frederic Bastiat

Who am I??
I'm a person who was scammed by somebody and who scammed people - First! (Don't worry that's my past! Everyone have such past do they??)
I'm the guy who was punched and kicked in School when we are talking about this (This reminds me for some films like Monk - check out he in school (his past!))
I'm the guy who follow the crowd, what I found was horrible that I went in a place where most people play the games which other play like "League of Legends" - outside and home all they talking about this game which one round takes 60 minutes. I'm now 2016 year in school and still listening about the football what has happen, who has played, who has won, who has won privious round, which is the best team and I'm sure that I'm genius because of listening this discussion. I can say it from here....
I'm just ironic, I don't like football, logicaly I don't like to listen = so I don't like to watch why?? You must find out! — Deyth Banger

What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in the most disinterested and noble way, could find the necessary metaphors by which a radically changing culture could be explained to its inhabitants. — Robert Hughes

He stirred my soul in the most subtle way and the story between us wrote itself. — Nikki Rowe

The free intellect copies human life, but it considers this life to be something good and seems to be quite satisfied with it. That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The moment you frame your own awareness within a second level of self -consciousness is the moment your mind is most up for grabs ... You're safe because you have an ironic distance from the coercive techniques I'm employing. All of them that is, except this one. Are you on your guard yet? Does it feel good? Of course not. — Douglas Rushkoff

Pertaining to a certain order of architecture, otherwise known as Normal American. Most of the public buildings of the United States are of the Ramshackle order, though some of our earlier architects preferred the Ironic. Recent additions to the White House in Washington are Theo-Doric, the ecclesiastic order of the Dorians. They are exceedingly fine and cost one hundred dollars a brick. — Ambrose Bierce

Although the view that, once discovered, ideas can be imitated for free by anybody is pervasive, it is far from the truth. While it may occasionally be the case that an idea is acquired at no cost - ideas are generally difficult to communicate, and the resources for doing so are limited. It is rather ironic that a group of economists, who are also college professors and earn a substantial living teaching old ideas because their transmission is neither simple nor cheap, would argue otherwise in their scientific work. Most of the times imitation requires effort and, what is more important, imitation requires purchasing either some products or some teaching services from the original innovator, meaning that most spillovers are priced. — Michele Boldrin

That kindness is invincible, provided it's sincere - not ironic or an act. What can even the most vicious person do if you keep treating him with kindness and gently set him straight - if you get the chance - correcting him cheerfully at the exact moment that he's trying to do you harm. "No, no, my friend. That isn't what we're here for. It isn't me who's harmed by that. It's you." And show him, gently and without pointing fingers, that it's so. That bees don't behave like this - or any other animals with a sense of community. Don't do it sardonically or meanly, but affectionately - with no hatred in your heart. And not ex cathedra or to impress third parties, but speaking directly. Even if there are other people around. — Marcus Aurelius

It's way beyond ironic that a place called the Holy Land is the location of the fiercest, most deeply felt hatred in the world. And it makes for wonderful theater. — George Carlin

It is ironic that a movement that made its reputation championing the irrelevance of biological differences when those differences were to most women's disadvantage immediately returned to biological determinism when those differences were to the most women's advantage. — Warren Farrell

One of the most destructive mistakes we Christians make is to prioritize shared beliefs over shared relationship, which is deeply ironic considering we worship a God who would rather die than lose relationship with us. — Rachel Held Evans

I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings. — Joe Wright

One of the most ironic things about capitalism is that the capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with. Actually they will give you the money to make a movie that makes them look bad, if they believe they can make money off it. — Michael Moore

I think it is very ironic that most people think that the banjo is a southern white instrument. It came from Africa and even for the first years that white people played banjo they would put on blackface. — Bela Fleck

Your inability to forgive has always been your most ironic character trait. — Elizabeth Little

It's ironic. Letting yourself experience what you most don't want to experience is the only way to truly be human. *** — Johnny B. Truant

It's ironic that most evangelical churches are filled with people who live very much like the world but look different from it. It should be exactly the opposite. We should look similar to those in our community but act differently. — Ed Stetzer

Most Russians don't treat the government, or those in power, as something close to them. They don't believe that they, as ordinary people, are able to change the development of things. That's why they have a very specific ironic sentiment towards power and the figures that represent it. I wanted to translate this irony into the cinematic language. — Andrey Zvyagintsev

Isn't it ironic that pay, perks, and benefits all cost your company at the bottom line, but authentic recognition, especially when it's most unexpected, costs very little and gives the most impressive return on investment? — Chip Conley

Every creature on earth returns to home. It is ironic that we have made wildlife refuges for ibis, pelican, egret, wolf, crane, deer, mouse, moose, and bear, but not for ourselves in the places we live day after day. We understand that the loss of habitat is the most disastrous event that can occur to a free creauture.
We fervently point out how other creatures' natural territories have become surrounded by cities, ranches, highways, noise, and other dissonance, as though we are not affected also.
We know that for creatures to live on, they must at least from time to time have a home place, a place where they feel both protected and free — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It is ironic that we have more technology to make our lives more efficient, ostensibly reducing our workload, and we work harder than we ever have. I was dragged into email kicking and screaming. On most issues technological I'm wrong, but I think I had this one nailed. Given the way emails come like baseballs from a machine in a batting cage, I spend more time responding to them than I spent manually opening and responding to letters. My friends from England write beautiful letters: bonded correspondence paper, elegant penmanship, and prose that reads like poetry. I shoot back an email. To the equivalent of a well-prepared feast I reciprocate with the equivalent of a bag of chips. — Michael S. Horton

He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal. — John Fowles

For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads, 'We came in peace for all Mankind.' As the United States was dropping seven and a half megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock. — Carl Sagan

The most ironic thing in the world is having no say when your name is determined for the first time (which is also for the last time for most), because newborns are not necessarily known for speaking their minds. — Pawan Mishra

It's ironic that we rush through being "single" as if it's some disease or malady to get rid of or overcome. The truth is, most likely, one day you will meet someone and it will be gone. And once it's gone, it's really gone! Why does no one tell us how important it is to enjoy being single and being by yourself? That time is defining and amazing and nothing to "cure". It is being alone that will actually set you up the best for being with someone else. — Drew Barrymore

Sam: "I always thought you were the most beautiful of all the Nephilim."
Meg: "That's ironic because I always thought you were the ugliest of all the angels. — Cynthia Hand

Ive learnt the most about myself through the people and places i no longer visit, such an ironic exprience.
The greatest lessons are from those we give the keys of our hearts to & trust all too easily; realising later on, they are just apart of this grande' story and not everyone gets to make it to the end chapter & happy ever after. — Nikki Rowe

And the most ironic thing? If Kanin hadn't Turned me, I would never have met Zeke. But being a vampire meant I could never be with him either. — Julie Kagawa

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn't a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that "God does not play dice with the universe." He was wrong, and it's too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: "Einstein! Stop telling God what to do. — Sam Kean

It's so ironic that life is all about love, yet we live most of it either searching, never finding, or messing it up. — Behdad Sami

What New England is, is a state of mind, a place where dry humor and perpetual disappointment blend to produce an ironic pessimism that folks from away find most perplexing — Willem Lange

Most of the time
99 percent of the time
you just don't know how and why the threads are looped together, and that's okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes. — Lauren Oliver

The most ironic outcome of the black Civil Rights movement has been the creation of a new black middle class which is increasingly separate from the black underclass. — Henry Louis Gates

Prayer, at its most basic level, was surrender. Like Jesus in the garden, saying, "Not My will, but Yours, be done." The ironic thing was, when a person surrendered their will, they got God's, and then they received what they were really looking for all along. This was what she believed. — Chris Fabry

It is quite ironic that those calling the loudest for 'morality' are typically the most immoral of all. — Christina Engela

Emily just knew that the grocery store clerk's cousin had slipped on a bath mat and fallen out a second-story open window only to be saved because the woman landed on a discarded mattress.
But what interested Emily most about the incident was how the cousin had subsequently met a man in physical therapy who introduced her to his half brother who she ended up marrying and then running over with her car a year later after a heated argument. And that man, it was discovered, had been the one to dump the mattress in her yard.
He'd saved her so that she could later cripple him.
Emily found that not ironic but intriguing.
Because everything, she believed, was connected. — Holly Goldberg Sloan

Most young people have rebellious, anti-authoritarian impulses. They don't like being told what, when, or how to do something. It's ironic, then, that many of these same people embrace a system in which there would be far more regulations, many more bureaucrats micromanaging their lives, and far more rules and restrictions on how things can be done. — Glenn Beck

As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home -first for six years, then for 19 months. How could I stand the separation from family and friends? It is ironic, I say, that in an authoritarian state it is only the prisoner of conscience who is genuinely free. Yes, we have given up our right to a normal life. But we have stayed true to that most precious part of our humanity-our conscience. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I was too hard to decide just what she hated most about [Kyleren]. There were so many thing. She hated his humor. It attacked her without fear. She hated the way he laughed. It was too irresponsible. She hated his smile. Full of confidence, it displayed too much self-assurance. She especially loathed his clarity of mind. His singular obsession with achieving the next objective. Kyleren possessed no ambition, no need to prove himself. It made him predictable, honest, and easy to trust. — Amanda Gerry

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing. — Garrison Keillor

When Kirsten carried out a portable defibrillator the size of a breadbox, I very nearly went into cardiac arrest. Which, let's face it, would probably fall under the category of 'most ironic thing ever'. — Emmett Spain

After torturing our adrenaline by watching a horror movie for a couple of hours the places we are most afraid of are the doors and windows of the room even though they are the only ways for us to escape in case of occurrence such an event. — Sanhita Baruah

It's ironic that the Tea Party populists, most of whom believe that they are furthering the American ideal of "rugged individualism," are supporting mega-corporate-friendly policies like Reaganomics and Clintonomics and are making it very difficult for individuals to be anything other than drones in a giant corporate-run economic machine. And, on the flipside, those countries that call themselves "democratic socialist" in their organization - Finland, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden - actually provide a deep and fertile soil into which entrepreneurs may plant new businesses. — Thom Hartmann

Its the most breathtakingly ironic things about living: the fact that we are all-identical twins included-alone. Singular. And yet what we seek-what saves us-is our connection to others. — Wally Lamb

Ironic that those most holy are least likely to see themselves that way. — Mark Buchanan

The Mafia's involvement with gay bars is ironic on so many levels. Macho guys ruled gangland but supported a subculture for nelly queens. Most mobsters were evil sociopaths motivated only by financial self-interest but nevertheless were doing a good thing in providing social spaces for the gay community. The mob was on the wrong side of the liquor laws by serving gay folk but on the right side of the 14th Amendment in arguing for equal protection. The Mafia exploited an oppressed community but advanced the gay cause. — Phillip Crawford Jr.

In our native terms, the ironic style is often compounded with the sardonic and the hard-boiled; even the effortlessly superior. But irony originates in the glance and the shrug of the loser, the outsider, the despised minority. It is a nuance that comes most effortlessly to the oppressed. — Christopher Hitchens

In practice, you realise that most attempts to feed your baby in a public space will be met with subtle but palpable resistance. Older chaps roll their eyes, slick young businesswomen purse their mouths, teenagers look disgusted, waitresses anxious. But it strikes me as ironic that many members of the public fret about British Muslims donning the hijab, yet happily condone the veiling of nursing mothers. — Rowan Pelling

It's ironic. The poorest, most underdeveloped areas of the world are now humanity's last hope. The rest of the world is one huge hell where a handful of scattered survivors are trying to escape. — Manel Loureiro

It does seem quite ironic to me that the very people who clearly have made no attempt to think for themselves are always the most vocal in demanding respect for their "ideas". — Pat Condell

My personal success would be that people understand what I was trying to do. It was the most palatable when I watchmen_7_mdid Dawn. With Watchmen, too, I feel the same way. The movie's ironic and satirical and it's funny and serious and that's kind of the same way I felt about Dawn. Like I really was making a movie that knows it's a zombie movie and enjoys that and wants the audience to say, yeah, that's okay. — Zack Snyder

That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard - of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For me and my entire generation, we took on this kind of sarcastic, ironic, snarkiness because it seemed the most extreme reaction to the earnestness of hippies. — Chuck Palahniuk

What really gets me is this - it's very ironic that those who are most critical of extra tax are those who are most vociferous in demanding extra expenditure. What gets me even more is that having demanded that extra expenditure they are not prepared to face the consequences of their own action and stand by the necessity to get the tax to pay for it. I wish some of them had a bit more guts and courage than they have. — Margaret Thatcher