60 Broken Promises Quotes On Keeping Your Word

By Norbert Juma

Master quote curator and editor on a mission to inspire

Updated November 10, 2023

Apart from being inspirational, broken promise quotes can help you keep your promises.

In fact, keeping one’s promise brings value to your life and makes it possible for you to earn respect in society.

Although it appears easy to keep a promise, sometimes people don’t mind breaking them.

Most of us have failed to keep our promises on various occasions.

Hence, evaluating the ways to overcome bad habits like breaking promises is more than essential.

What does the phrase Keeping Promise means?

The phrase “Keeping Promise” means doing an act that you have previously said to do.

It’s a kind of commitment you make with another person.

Simply put, keeping a promise is a verbal contract between two individuals.

Merely giving your words is binding on a person as if these words have been written on a contract.

Why Keeping our Promise is Hard for Some?

Most of us aren’t aware of how powerful our words are.

Hence, we don’t know why we should stick to our words.

Although there might be many reasons for not keeping our promises, here are some of the most common ones to consider.

While you make a promise, you don’t have the intention to keep it
Sometimes, you don’t remember what you have agreed to
You don’t consider it necessary to abide by your words
There isn’t a will to renegotiate the terms of a promise that was previously made
You have changed your mind and don’t want to keep the promise
If keeping your word isn’t beneficial for you anymore

Consequences of Breaking a Promise

The consequences associated with breaking a promise depend on the type of promise you have broken.

If you make a promise to someone who is in a close relationship with you, the consequences of breaking such a promise can be devastating.

Apart from affecting a relationship, breaking a promise can also damage your credibility.

Here are some of the most prominent consequences that you may face when not keeping your promise.

You may miss opportunities to excel in your life
It could damage your relationship with others
People will refer to you as an unreliable person
Your bad reputation can trigger conflicts with others
In the end, you will experience the guilt of not keeping your words

Inspirational broken promises quotes

1. “Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

2. “The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

3. “It felt liked a broken promise. Like the Fisher King’s wound; never heals.” ― Ian Brennan

4. “Half the promises people say were never kept, were never made.” ―Edgar Watson Howe

5. “There’s nothing worse than breaking a promise to someone who cares about you.” ―Lisa Kleypas

6. “I would rather be accused of breaking precedents than breaking promises.” ― John F. Kennedy

7. “This world is full of broken things: Broken hearts, broken promises, broken people.” ― John Connolly

8. “We must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot.” — Abraham Lincoln

9. “Promises may get thee friends, but non-performance will turn them into enemies.” ―Benjamin Franklin

10. “His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he is now, nothing.” — William Shakespeare

Thought-provoking broken promises quotes

11. “All promise outruns performance.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

12. “Don’t make any promises that you can’t keep.” — Ann Marie Aguilar

13. “Promises are about as good as already chewed-up gum.” — Ce Johnson

14. “His words were like Satin on her Skin. She just picked the lies she liked the best.” — Efrat Cybulkiewicz

15. “Decisions and promises can be made, and also broken due to sudden unexpected changes.” ― Tara Ramsey

16. “The world is always changing. Learn how to allow for it. Someone makes a promise, and then they break it.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

17. “Broken vows are like broken mirrors. They leave those who held to them bleeding and staring at fractured images of themselves.” — Richard Paul Evans

18. “Trust, is the stone thrown into the sea, sinking deep in all its murkiness, unable to see what it once lived and believed to be a promise.” — Anthony Liccione

19. “When a man takes an oath… he’s holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers, then – he needn’t hope to find himself again.” — Robert Bolt

20. “Far too often, the best thing I can have in my hand when someone makes a promise is a really big broom so that I can sweep up the broken pieces.” — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Broken promises quotes to help you keep your word

21. “One promises much to avoid giving little.” — Luc de Clapiers

22. “Broken promises, like a broken glass, is hard to replace.” ― Wille Mae Gaskin

23. “Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” — Warren Buffett

24. “We promise according to our hopes and perform according to our fears.” — Francois de La Rochefoucauld

25. “My distant colors still bleeding, a broken promise for the soul, never loving, never healing.” — James Dean Bradfield

26. “Mankind can make promises and break them. The truth is, mankind doesn’t always keep their promises.” — Beatrice Ivory

27. “Take your broken promises, and don’t come back again / It’s time to say goodbye, I’m gonna leave you where you lie.” — Lance Dowdle

28. “I told you in confidence, and trusted you’d never sacrifice our silence, I rise from the ashes, And remains of your broken promises.” — Jonas Ekdahl

29. “I’ve tried to change, but they always around, pulling me down in bed, Gave you my word, but they were just broken promises.” — Christopher Maurice Brown

30. “Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.” — Hannah Arendt

Interesting broken promises quotes

31. “Some promises are better left unsaid.” — Ashlee Simpson

32. “Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.” — Jonathan Swift

33. “Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth.” — Mohandas Gandhi

34. “Better break your word than do worse in keeping it.” — Thomas Fuller

35. “Some persons make promises for the pleasure of breaking them.” — William Hazlitt

36. “One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

37. “Promises are like crying babies in a theater. They should be carried out at once.” ― Norman Vincent Peale

38. “It always makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and the broken promises.” ― Chief Joseph

39. “The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

40. “When you have a dream, and someone makes promises they keep breaking, it is hard to recover. You lose hope.” ― Yasmine El Rashidi

Wise broken promise quotes

41. “Liars make the best promises.” — Pierce Brown

42. “Better a broken promise than none at all.” — Mark Twain

43. “Oaths are but words, and words but wind.” — Samuel Butler

44. “Never promise more than you can perform.” ― Publilius Syrus

45. “Sometimes your pledges become your problems.” ― Amit Kalantri

46. “Broken promises are the worst. Better not to promise anything.” ― Bill Lishman

47. “Promises are only as strong as the person who gives them…” ― Stephen Richards

48. “But promises based on ignorance always prove disappointing.” — Jussi Adler-Olsen

49. “Broken promises. Shattered dreams. Life is full of miseries. Deep wounds. Scribbled randomly. Just on blank page.” ― Bisma Altaf

50. “He spoke again as if he hadn’t just shattered his promise and her security. Her house of glass now lay in a pile of shards.” ― Aleatha Romig

51. “She mediated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Tilneys and trap-doors.” ― Jane Austen

52. “But we danced, under wigs and between unfinished walls, through broken promises and around empty cupboards.” ― Sherman Alexie

53. “Better a broken promise than none at all.” ― Mark Twain

54. “A broken promise is not a lie.” ― Paul Ekman

55. “I’m tired of the lies and the cheating, and the broken promises that were never meant to be kept.” ― Sidney Sheldon

56. “My whole life has been one big broken promise.” ― Sara Zarr

57. “A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.” ― George Bernard Shaw

58. “As the weeks and months unfolded, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise.” ― Martin Luther King, Jr.

59. “Promises are worse than lies. You don’t just make them believe, you also make them hope.” ― Marilyn Monroe

60. “Take a deep breath and take this to heart; God has nothing to do with broken promises. When He says, I promise, mark it down it’s going to happen.” ― James MacDonald