50 Boo Quotes To Keep You Shaking In Your Boots

By Clifton Sankofa

School Leader, Language Arts Expert & Master Quote Curator

Published June 20, 2023

Are you looking for interesting boo quotes?

The word boo can conjure haunting ghosts or the energy of our love interest.

Check out our boo quotes below for some sizzling, hilarious, and sometimes frightening content.

Why is boo a scary word?

Depending on the context, boo can be intimately friendly or very scary.

Traditionally, words like boo and its variations “boh” or “bo” go back hundreds of years.

Check out these other scary words from cultures across the globe:

In Spain, people yell “uhh” when scaring someone.
In Czech, people say “baf” when aiming to catch another by surprise.
In France, “hou” is yelled while trying to frighten an unsuspecting person.

Why do humans yell “boo” when trying to surprise or scare someone?

If you are looking for how we came to say “boo” when trying to scare someone, we end up in Scotland.

Scottish culture admires and appreciates the things that go bump in the night.

Ghouls, ghosts, gnomes, sprites, and banshees are all described as horrific, with a penchant for scaring humans.

Unsurprisingly, people would associate these beings with frightening humans by jumping from the darkness and yelling, “Booooo.”

Ancient Greek culture has a similar word: to cry aloud, roar, or shout.

The Greeks had poetry jams where local poets would share their work.

The colosseums were notorious because audiences who disliked the performers would boo in unison until the poet was removed from the stage.

Imagine thousands of people booing you at one time!

That must have been hard.

Others say the boo sound imitates the sound a sad calf makes.

Why do we boo bad performances?

To boo means to show displeasure at someone or something.

Most people boo entertainers, politicians, or actors.

Artists today should be thankful that the worst thing to happen to them while performing is a potential boo.

In the past, audiences would throw objects such as rotten produce, shoes, or even animal waste on stage if they did not like a performance.

To learn more, check out our boo quotes below.

Short boo quotes about human’s biggest fear: being rejected by a crowd

These quotes remind us why It is said that public speaking is more fearful than death.

1. “Fans don’t boo nobodies.” — Reggie Jackson

2. “A boo is a lot louder than a cheer.” — Lance Armstrong

3. “San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city.” — Lance Armstrong

4. “They can boo me, they can cheer me, as long as there’s some kind of reaction.” — Britt Baker

5. “When I’m a fan, I show up to boo. I don’t show up to cheer; I show up to heckle.” — Chael Sonnen

6. “If you have ten people cheering and one person booing, all you hear is the booing.” — Lance Armstrong

7. “Music, that’s what it is to me. One time in Kezar Stadium, they gave me a standing boo.” — George Halas

8. “You can boo me and feel happy about yourself because you’re part of the crowd that did that.” — Adam Goodes

9. “I consider myself a good guy. Now, the audience thinks differently. They love to boo me.” — The Miz

10. “I don’t mean the people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy. When they boo you, you know they mean you.” — Lance Armstrong

The top boo quotes about ghosts and specters

These quotes honor the power of ghosts and other specters that go “boo” in the night.

11. “I’m an atheist, and I don’t believe in ghosts.” — Ram Gopal Varma

12. “Of all ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.” — Arthur Conan Doyle

13. “The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” — Italo Calvino

14. “That’s what the ghosts want us to do; all the exciting things they no longer can.” — Chuck Palahniuk

15. “Science fiction is no more written for scientists that ghost stories are written for ghosts.” — Brian Aldiss

16. “I do feel that memories haunt us the way ghosts haunt us or might haunt characters in a film.” — David Lowery

17. “A Head Full of Ghosts was my first full horror novel, and that felt like coming home as a writer.” — Paul G. Tremblay

18. “I never really address myself to any image anybody has of me. That’s like fighting with ghosts.” — Sally Field

19. “I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam, the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers.” — Tim O’Brien

20. “As a kid, I was more scared of the supernatural stuff and ghosts and goblins and the Crypt Keeper from ‘Tales from the Crypt.’ — Evan Peters

The best boo quotes about the monsters inside of us

Imaginary monsters are scary, but these quotes suggest that the scariest monsters are the ones inside of us.

21. “Your memory is a monster; you forget, it doesn’t.” — John Irving

22. “Personally, I have nightmares about the unstoppable monster.” — David Slade

23. “Anger is the enemy of non-violence, and pride is a monster that swallows it up.” — Mahatma Gandhi

24. “Lovely mother, but when she gets angry, she’s absolutely terrifying. She’s a damn monster.” — Rhea Ripley

25. “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process, he does not become a monster.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

26. “We cannot, of course, disprove God, just as we can’t disprove Thor, fairies, leprechauns, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.” — Richard Dawkins

27. “Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.” — Charlie Chaplin

28. “I’ll say this: The scariest monster in the world is human beings and what we are capable of, especially when we get together.” — Jordan Peele

29. “Goliath was a champion, a monster who had never been beaten, and then this young guy, David, came forward, a child who believed in God and did it.” — Tyson Fury

30. “There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.” — Noam Chomsky