90 Gossip Quotes Inspiring You to Say No to Rumors

These gossip quotes will help you eliminate rumors from your life at work, at school, or among friends.

Everybody has had experience with gossip.

You may have been the target of gossip, you may have heard it from someone else, or you may even have been tempted to share gossip with others.

Sometimes gossip is so harmful it can be considered bullying.

It’s hard to imagine anything more embarrassing than to be caught spreading rumors, yet it is not always easy to recognize when you are doing it.

So how do we know what qualifies as gossip?

A good rule of thumb is that if you wouldn’t feel comfortable saying it to someone, you shouldn’t say it about them.

This kind of comment is rarely necessary, and it’s best to make a habit of keeping these thoughts to oneself.

As you browse the gossip quotes below, consider the benefits of not engaging in gossip.

You may even be able to help a friend understand how harmful gossip can be.

Also read these rumor quotes about gossip and drama.

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration. 

Our inspirational quote category page has even more inspirational and educational quotes.

Gossip quotes about the definition of gossip

1.) “Gossip is nature’s telephone.” – Sholom Aleichem

2.) “Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It’s gossip.” – Erma Bombeck

3.) “People love gossip. It’s the biggest thing that keeps the entertainment industry going.” – Ellen DeGeneres

You will also enjoy our article on bad habits quotes.

4.) “History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.” – Gore Vidal

5.) “All literature is gossip.” – Truman Capote

6.) “Gossip needn’t be false to be evil – there’s a lot of truth that shouldn’t be passed around.” – Frank A. Clark

7.) “Gossip is the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid.” – Walter Winchell

8.) “Gossip is poison.” – Gisele Bundchen

9.) “Gossip is a very dangerous tool. We should be more wary of the gossiper, and not the gossip they’re trying to relay to you.” – John Lydon

10.) “Gossip is hardly uplifting.” – Ginger Rogers

11.) “Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.” – Erica Jong

12.) “Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules.” – Douglas Adams

You will also enjoy our article on bullying quotes.

Gossip quotes giving advice

13.) “It is just as cowardly to judge an absent person as it is wicked to strike a defenseless one. Only the ignorant and narrow-minded gossip, for they speak of persons instead of things.” – Lawrence G. Lovasik

14.) “Secrecy sets barriers between men, but at the same time offers the seductive temptation to break through the barriers by gossip or confession.” – Georg Simmel

15.) “When it comes to gossip, I have to readily admit men are as guilty as women.” – Marilyn Monroe

16.) “Every day or two, I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.” – Henry David Thoreau

17.) “Watch out for the joy-stealers: gossip, criticism, complaining, faultfinding, and a negative, judgmental attitude.” – Joyce Meyer

18.) “Gossip is called gossip because it’s not always the truth.” – Justin Timberlake

19.) “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” – Marie Curie

20.) “It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.” – Honor de Balzac

21.) “Words, once spoken, can never be recalled.” – Wentworth Dillon

22.) “How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.” – Marcus Aurelius

23.) “Words spoken are like eggs broken.” – Sheri Glewen

24.) “There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us.” – Edward Wallis Hoch

Check out our collection of people talking behind your back quotes if you enjoy this article.

Witty gossip quotes

25.) “Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” – Will Rogers

26.) “To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.” – Henry David Thoreau

27.) “The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.” – Will Rogers

28.) “Gossip is what no one claims to like, but everybody enjoys.” – Joseph Conrad

29.) “Gossip is when you hear something you like about someone you don’t.” – Earl Wilson

30.) “The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.” – George Bernard Shaw

31.) “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody come sit next to me.” – Alice Roosevelt Longworth

32.) “I never gossip. I observe. And then relay my observations to practically everyone.” – Gail Carriger

33.) “In small towns, news travels at the speed of boredom.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón

34.) “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Henry Thomas Buckle

35.) “The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught.” – Lemony Snicket

36.) “I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.” – Andy Warhol

Gossip quotes and rumors sayings

37.) “He gossips habitually; he lacks the common wisdom to keep still that deadly enemy of man, his own tongue.” – Mark Twain

38.) “We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.” – Cato the Elder

39.) “Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty tobacco-pipes of those who diffuse it; it proves nothing but the bad taste of the smoker.” – George Eliot

40.) “Doesn’t matter what you do, or how you do it, your neighbors are gonna talk about you anyway.” – Felder Rushing

41.) “It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.” – Errol Flynn

42.) “It is presumptuous to draw conclusions about a person from what one has heard.“ – Jude Morgan

43.) “Isn’t it kind of silly to think that tearing someone else down builds you up?” – Sean Covey

44.) “No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.” – Bertrand Russell

45.) “I guess rumors are more exciting than the truth.” – Venus Williams

46.) “Fake friends believe in rumors. Real friends believe in you.” – Yolanda Hadid
If you’re enjoying these quotes, make sure to read our collection of fake friends quotes to help you deal with deceptive people.

47.) “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.” – Gautama Buddha

48.) “I resolve to speak ill of no man whatever, not even in a matter of truth; but rather by some means excuse the faults I hear charged upon others, and upon proper occasions speak all the good I know of everybody.” – Benjamin Franklin

Gossip quotes about bullying

49.) “A coward talks to everyone but you.” – Shannon L. Alder

50.) “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” – Robert Frost

51.) “One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.” – Michael J. Fox

52.) “If you’re horrible to me, I’m going to write a song about it, and you won’t like it. That’s how I operate.” – Taylor Swift

53.) “People who love themselves, don’t hurt other people. The more we hate ourselves, the more we want others to suffer.” – Dan Pearce

54.) “You should never make fun of something that a person can’t change about themselves.” – Phil Lester

55.) “It’s important to stand up to all forms of bullying, and it’s even more important for those who are around you to be just as courageous and stand with you!” – Normani Kordei

56.) “Bullying has been around since humans have been around, I think. I think it is wrong.” – India Eisley

57.) “With bullying and all the stuff going on, words are very important. Words can be more hurtful than anything physically.” – Eric Church

58.) “Most comedy is based on getting a laugh at somebody else’s expense. And I find that that’s just a form of bullying in a major way. So I want to be an example that you can be funny and be kind, and make people laugh without hurting somebody else’s feelings.” – Ellen DeGeneres

59.) “The people who are bullying you, they’re insecure about who they are, and that’s why they’re bullying you. It never has to do with the person they’re bullying. They desperately want to be loved and be accepted, and they go out of their way to make people feel unaccepted so that they’re not alone.” – Madelaine Petsch

60.) “Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.” – Benjamin Disraeli

More gossip quotes and sayings

61. “Gossip was usually a mindless distraction from a far too serious world.” – Dianne Sylvan

63. “Rumours began with the whispered gossip of native servants and spread quickly to the rest of the population.” – Paul Scott

64. “Gossip is an imperative evolutionary characteristic that enables a community to stand strong and united.” – Abhijit Naskar

65. “In a little town, there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.” – Victor Hugo

66. “Never engage in gossip, it kills your soul, and wounds another’s heart.” – Steven Aitchison

67. “Gossip never goes away, no matter where you are in life.” – Miranda Kenneally

68. “Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.” – Paulo Coelho

69. “Never speak disrespectfully of Society, Algernon. Only people who can’t get into it do that.” – Oscar Wilde

70. “Rumor travels faster, but it don’t stay put as long as truth.” – Will Rogers

Insightful gossip quotes to ponder on

71. “Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.” ― Socrates

72. “How would your life be different if…You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the day…You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.” ― Steve Maraboli

73. “Word spread because word will spread. Stories and secrets fight, stories win, shed new secrets, which new stories fight, and on.” ― China Miéville

74. “A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it. But first, while moving in a circle, it hits its target. So does gossip.” ― Vera Nazarian

75. “His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend. His backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract.” ― William Shakespeare

76. “Men and women walked casually about as they did on the main floor, every now and then stopping one another, exchanging pleasantries or scraps of relevantly irrelevant information. Gossip.” ― Robert Ludlum

77. “You know I don’t listen to market gossip,” she began, “but it is hard not to hear it when my daughter’s name is mentioned.” ― Tracy Chevalier

78. “There was not a lot of room for someone like me, who kept the gossip mill running like a hamster wheel.” ― Molly Harper

79. “We do not engage in idle or intentional gossip which undermines someone else’s integrity or which spreads the seeds of fear by talking unthinkingly about illness, disasters, and all the other fears which run rampant in the world.” ― Donna Goddard

80. “What can a woman do when scandalous gossip travels the world? If she defends herself, she sounds guilty. So I waited some more.” ― Margaret Atwood

Gossip Quotes To Distance Yourself From People Who Gossip

81. “Gossip is always a personal confession, either of malice or imbecility.” — Josiah Gilbert Holland

82. “Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.” — Barbara Walters

83. “One of the most deadly diseases in the world today is gossip.” — David Kamara

84. “Gossip . . . reflects the insecurity of those who initiate it.” — Oprah Winfrey

85. “The mouthpiece of ignorance / is gossip / The wellspring of gossip / —is lies.” — Kurt Philip Behm

86. “Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.” — Richard Steele

87. “Make it a habit to shut down conversations that are aimed at tearing others down.” — Natalie Tomlinson

88. “Gossip serves no purpose other than to hear yourself talk.” — Catherine Pulsifer

89. “I can feel a desire to gossip coming over me. I don’t want to give in to it; narrative style should always be brief.” — Madame de Sevigne

90. “It is a pleasure to me people – who do not gossip.” — Grenville Kleiser

How can we help stop gossip every day?

It’s one thing to be able to form good habits and keep from sharing gossip ourselves.

It can be difficult to confront ourselves honestly and recognize when we are sharing rumors or spreading gossip.

It’s even more challenging to notice when friends are engaging in gossip and to help them see why they should stop.

It may be easier to simply change the subject if you realize that the person you are talking to has started to gossip about someone else.

If you feel comfortable, you could gently confront your friend by saying, “I don’t know about that,” or, “I wouldn’t want anyone to get their feelings hurt.”

However you choose to go about it, you will surely feel better for eliminating gossip from your life at work, at school, or among friends.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these gossip quotes and sayings?

Do you have any other favorite quotes to add?

Let us know in the comment section below.