50 Cringe Quotes About Those Uncomfortable Moments

These cringe quotes are for everyone because even if we don’t know how to describe it, we have all had those moments that make us uncomfortable or embarrassed for ourselves or others.

Cringe is the response you have to embarrassing or awkward moments and can have a physical reaction, a mental reaction, an emotional reaction, or all three.

Here are some things that might make you cringe:

• Someone wears clothing with crude language to a funeral.
• Someone tells a bad joke, and no one laughs, so there is only awkward silence.
• Someone chews with their mouth open.
• Someone with no self-awareness goes on and on with their story, but no one listens.
• Someone wears something ugly that draws attention, such as a costume.

If you have ever been creeped out by someone or felt embarrassed for them, you have had a cringeworthy moment.

Take a few minutes to read these cringe quotes and see if you can relate.

A Few Top Cringe Quotes

See if you can relate to these quotes about what makes people want to cringe.

1. “Embarrassment is where growth happens.” — Jaylen Brown

2. “Most people cringe at the thought of a casserole.” — Marcus Samuelsson

3. “I hate eating food on camera—I always cringe afterward!” — Rachel Khoo

4. “I can’t stand to see myself act. It just makes me cringe.” — Thomas Jane

5. “The reality is almost everything I do, I cringe about later.” — David Hewlett

6. “Embarrassment and awkward situations are not foreign things to me.” — Paul Rudd

7. “When I look at pictures when I was younger, I do the quintessential cringe.” — Rachel Roy

8. “I don’t want to see old people doing rap and rock and roll. It makes me cringe.” — Grace Slick

9. “I don’t really get embarrassed because my whole life has been one big embarrassment.” — Joe Gatto

10. “Five years from now, I’m probably going to look back on the things I’m doing and cringe.” — Fiona Apple

Cringe Quotes from Movies

These lines from popular movies make many people cringe.

11. “I ain’t got time to bleed.” — Blain, Predator

12. “You had me at hello.” — Dorothy, Jerry Maguire

13. “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.” — Johnny, Dirty Dancing

14. “We were made to fit together.” — Maggie Rice, City of Angels

15. “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.” — Carrie, Four Weddings and a Funeral

16. “Are you a Mexi-can or a Mexi-can’t?” — Agent Sands, Once Upon a Time in Mexico

17. “If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change.” — Rocky, Rocky IV

18. “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.” — Anna, Notting Hill

19. “Your scent, it’s like a drudge to me. You’re like my own personal brand of heroin.” — Edward, Twilight

20. “I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating, and it gets everywhere. But not like you. You’re everything soft and smooth.” — Anakin Skywalker, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones

Cringe Quotes About What Makes People Cringe

These quotes show more things that make people want to cringe.

21. “My past behavior makes me cringe.” — Denise Van Outen

22. “The land of embarrassment and breakfast.” — Julian Barnes

23. “I try not to cringe. Dog-earing a book feels like a violation of some sacred unspoken rule.” — Julie Murphy

24. “When I first met Clint Eastwood, I bobbed him a curtsy. I still cringe about that to this day.” — Trudie Styler

25. “I don’t cringe when I think of doing old material. A lot of the people have been with me through the years.” — Steve Forbert

26. “There is too much acceptance of people saying, ‘I am a math person, or I am an artsy person.’ It makes me cringe.” — Sal Khan

27. “I hope I’ve made a good film. And before you ask, a good film is one that I’d see three years from now and not cringe.” — Sajid Khan

28. “Have you ever gotten the feeling that you aren’t completely embarrassed yet, but you glimpse tomorrow’s embarrassment?” — Tom Cruise

29. “Early on, I found the attention completely embarrassing. I’d cringe if I saw my picture on the cover of a magazine.” — Julie Christie

30. “I sort of cringe when I hear myself say the word ‘work.’ Getting to do something you love to do never really feels like work.” — Lyle Lovett

Quotes that Make You Want to Cringe

Many people cringe when they hear quotes like these.

31. “Love is blind—marriage is the eye-opener.” — Pauline Thomason

32. “Age is of no importance unless you’re a cheese.” — Billie Burke

33. “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” — Steven Wright

34. “If you let your head get too big, it’ll break your neck.” — Elvis Presley

35. “Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” — Nora Ephron

36. “Life is like a sewer… what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.” — Tom Lehrer

37. “I am an early bird and a night owl… so I am wise, and I have worms.” — Michael Scott, The Office

38. “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It’s already tomorrow in Australia.” — Charles Schulz

39. “The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time.” — Joe Girard

40. “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar

More Cringe Quotes

Here are a few more quotes about people cringing or ones that may make you want to cringe yourself.

41. “Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings.” — Robert Bloch

42. “Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films; we don’t. We cringe away from it.” — Charlotte Rampling

43. “I say really stupid things sometimes. When I got back and watch some of my old interviews from when I was younger, I just cringe.” — Michelle Pfeiffer

44. “I think everybody looks back at their photos and cringe, and I get to experience it with everybody else in the world looking at mine.” — Mark-Paul Gosselaar

45. “I literally cringe every time I see someone trying to trash talk. Some people just don’t have it, and they try, and I find that funny.” — Alexander Volkanovski

46. “We’re often afraid of looking at our shadow because we want to avoid the shame or embarrassment that comes along with admitting mistakes.” — Marianne Williamson

47. “Maybe they notice me wincing whenever I hear them say it, but I don’t know: there are all sorts of reasons I could be wincing. Life is a wine-a-thon.” — Frank Portman

48. “I suppose I sometimes used to act like I wasn’t a human being… Sometimes I look back at myself and remember things I used to say or my hairstyle, and I cringe.” — Madonna

49. “My favorite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic – that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.” — Taika Waititi

50. “I’ll always cringe remembering those little embarrassing moments when I said something dumb on a conference call when my inexperience poked through when I should have been more solicitous of the judgment of those around me.” — Jon Lovett

Why Do I Have the Feeling of Cringe?

We often feel that something is cringe when something is “overdone,” “really different,” or awkward.

We usually feel something is cringey because we look at the situation and think that if it were us, we would be embarrassed or awkward, so we project that feeling onto the situation.

Share these cringe quotes with your friends and family, and share what makes you cringe in the comments.