50 Palindrome Quotes For Mind Flipping Fun
Published October 23, 2023
Nerd out and have some fun with our palindrome quotes.
As a Language Arts and English teacher, my deep appreciation and love affair with palindromes runs deep.
Find out more about this super fun literary element.
What is a palindrome?
A palindrome is a word or phrase that can be read the same way backward or forward.
Some awesome palindromes are:
- “Live not on evil.”
- “Niagara, O roar again!”
- “T. Eliot nixes sex in toilet.”
Palindrome is based on the Greek root word palin, which means again, and drom, which means to run.
The longest common single-word palindrome in English is “redivider.”
There is a longer, less commonly used palindrome, “detartrated,” which is a term chemists use to describe a reaction.
Punctuation rules do not apply to palindrome.
Therefore, “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama” is perfectly valid.
What are the two types of palindromes?
On Earth, we love to divide everything into categories and sub-categories.
So, of course, we have a variety of palindromes.
In word unit palindromes, the words form the same sentence in either direction.
A great example is, “King, are you glad you are king?”
The other type is called a mirrored palindrome, which means the word or phrase is graphically reversible.
Words like madam, dad, mom, or racecar are good examples.
How old are palindromes?
Palindromes are ancient.
We have written examples from 70 AD of palindrome graffiti written in the Roman town of Herculaneum.
The Sator Square is an old palindrome written in Latin.
It is interesting because it has both a literal and figurative meaning as it could read:
“The sower Arepo leads with his hand the plow” or “The sower Arepo holds the wheels with effort.”
Language nerds have been enjoying this palindrome for thousands of generations!
To learn more, check out our palindrome quotes below.
Short palindrome quotes to get your brain going
We start our palindrome journey with these short and sweet quotes about palindromes.
1. “I’m thinking of killing everyone whose name is a palindrome.” ― Dan Slott, Arkham Asylum
2. “Here’s a haiku/palindrome I wrote called Obsession. Bob bob bob bob.” — Jarod Kintz, A Letter to Andre Bretton
3. “Palindrome as well. My sister’s name is Hannah. Father liked word games.” — Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy
4. “I like palindromes.” — Monte Souder
5. “When all the world was palimpsest, it was a perfect palindrome. Inviolate.” — Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things
6. “About six million of its fifty million DNA letters form palindromic sequences.” — Mario Livio, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved
7. “For years, I thought that if I had to be a palindrome, make me kuulilennuteetunneliluuk.” — Maria Dahvana Headley, Magonia
8. “We are all made from stardust, and we will all return to star dust, like a cosmic palindrome.” — A.S. King, Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future
9. “I have a fear of palindromes.” — Jarod Kintz, It Occurred to Me
10. “A palindrome,” I said the first time she told me.” — Colleen Hoover, Confess
The top palindrome quotes for curious minds
Below are some palindrome quotes for language lovers.
11. “Surprisingly, palindromes appear not just in witty word games but also in the structure of the male-defining Y chromosome.” — Mario Livio, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved
12. “This near-palindrome (as I now think of it) gave us much innocent pleasure.” — Christopher Hitchens
13. “The Amen enema, as I call it. My palindrome for the Reverend.” — Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
14. “The palindrome means something like “The farmer Arepo works with his plow.” — Sam Kean, The Violinist’s Thumb
15. “The neatest palindrome in English is undoubtedly: A man, a plan, a canal: Panama.” — Mark Forsyth, The Etymologicon
16. “Poetry is far more difficult. And palindromes, with their perfect, satisfying taste.” — Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
17. “Ban Nab. It’s a palindrome. He said nothing, so I added: It reads the same forwards and backwards.” — Anthony Horowitz, A Line to Kill
18. “I’m not interested in driving a racecar, but I would love to cruise around in a palindrome.” — Jarod Kintz, This Book Is Not For Sale
19. “Dora J. Arod is my pseudonym, as he/it incorporates both my first and middle name, and is also a palindrome.” — Jarod Kintz, This Book Is Not For Sale
20. “What a waste of a palindrome she was, that Hannah.” — Colleen Hoover, Confess
Classic palindrome sentences for your amusement
Here are some iconic palindromes that are well-known in American English.
21. “Do geese see God?”
22. “Rats live on no evil star.”
23. “Was it Eliot’s toilet I saw?”
24. “Go deliver a dare, vile dog!”
25. “Murder for a jar of red rum.”
26. “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!”
27. “Some men interpret nine memos.”
28. “The noon sex alert relaxes no one.”
29. “Stressed? No tips? Spit on desserts.”
30. “Go hang a salami; I’m a lasagna hog!”
The best long palindrome quotes from programmers and writers
Palindromes are a relevant topic for people who write code.
31. “Palindromes can be of any length.” — William Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone
32. “An emordnilap is the reverse of a word or phrase that isn’t a nonsense string but also isn’t a palindrome ‒ which spells the same thing forwards and backwards.” ― Monte Souder
33. “To their amazement, however, the researchers on the sequencing team discovered that the chromosome fights withering with palindromes.” — Mario Livio, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved
34. “Mostly, he and Kazak (a palindromic name) appear only as a wave spiral between the sun and Betelgeuse, materializing on Earth for a short while every fifty-nine days.” — Charles J. Shields, And So it Goes
35. “To recognize the second half of a palindrome, you need to remember every character in the first half.” — William Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone
36. “Other palindromes besides ‘Bob’ are ‘refer’; ‘bird rib’; a nut for a jar of tuna’; ‘borrow or rob?’; ‘racecar’; ‘Yo banana boy!’; ‘deified’; ‘Go Hang a Salami, I’m a Lasagna Hog’ ‒ or like I already half mentioned, Stanley Yelnats.” — Monte Souder
37. “As you’ve probably figured out already, ‘emordnilap’ is the emordnilap of ‘palindrome,’ so therefore, ‘palindrome’ is not a palindrome.” ― Monte Souder
38. “Life is not a palindrome, don’t look backwards.” — Nanette L. Avery
39. “The magic square also reportedly kept away the devil, who traditionally so said the church got confused when he read palindromes.” — Sam Kean, The Violinist’s Thumb
40. “For instance, it is impossible to build a finite-state machine that will unlock a lock whenever you enter any palindrome.” — William Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone
Famous palindrome quotes and phrases
We close our list with these awesome palindrome phrases.
41. “One of Lindon’s amusing word-unit palindromes reads: “Girl, bathing on Bikini, eyeing boy, finds boy eyeing bikini on bathing girl.” — Mario Livio, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved
42. “Like a palindrome, like the way a perfect day should be.” — Abby Slovin, Letters In Cardboard Boxes
43. “We would have to define symmetry operations in terms other than purely geometrical, just as we did in the case of the palindromes.” — Mario Livio, The Equation That Couldn’t Be Solved
44. “A word is a palindrome if it has less than two letters or if its first and last letter are the same and the letters in the middle form a palindrome.” — William Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone
45. “Mojica was driving home from his lab one evening when he came up with the name CRISPR, for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” — Walter Isaacson, The Code Breaker
46. “Goatley forms an acting group which performs avant-garde plays written in palindromes, but the group slowly peters out as the members start dying off of starvation.” — Woody Allen, Zero Gravity
47. “The phobia of palindromes is called aibohphobia, which is itself a palindrome.” — Nayden Kostov, 523 Hard To Believe Facts
48. “Bathtub” is a palindrome with a speech impediment.” — Steve Harvey
49. “The simplest way to write a Logo program for recognizing palindromes would be to use this recursive definition.” — William Daniel Hillis, The Pattern on the Stone
50. “Before him, my life was a palindrome.” — Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything
See from both ways
Palindromes offer us powerful brain exercises that can broaden our view.
When we read a palindrome, it forces our brain to step outside its normal way of perceiving.
This can be a transformational experience because as we learn to increase our vision, we see more of what reality has to offer.
What is your favorite palindrome quote?
Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
