50 Postage Quotes For Stamp And Mail Lovers

Take a moment and check out these really cool postage quotes and redefine how you think of postage. 

It is easy to take standard shipping and mail methods for granted. 

Our postage quotes will help you better understand how far we have come with our mail system. 

Check out the quotes below to learn more. 

What is postage?

In plain terms, postage is the fee we pay for postal service. 

They are adhesive stamps or printed indicia that represent postal fees. 

Many federal and private institutions have postage systems, and people use them worldwide. 

Check out these cool postage facts below: 

• Sir Rowland Hill invented the postage stamp in 1837. 
• Early in his career, Abraham Lincoln was a postmaster. 
• Commemorative stamps mark essential anniversaries, people, and events. 

What makes postage authentic?

A stamp usually includes the country it is from, its value, and an image with adhesive on the back. 

There are many types of stamps, but people and businesses also use digital means to determine prices, weights, and stamps. 

Today, postage is authenticated through various processes, including bar codes and scanners. 

The postage we have access to has come a long way since its humble beginnings. 

How did mail get delivered before postage?

Before the invention of the postage stamp or universal means of shipping, people had to pay for their mail based on how far it traveled. 

Before the United States used stamps in the early nineteenth century, the post office and mail services worked much differently. 

The mail cost was paid by the person receiving it, not the person sending it. 

The cost was very expensive, based on the number of sheets sent and how far they traveled. 

The system did not work when the person receiving the letter could not afford or did not want to pay for it. 

This is where the idea of return to sender originated. 

When people did not want to receive the letter or could not pay, the letter was sent back to the sender, which cost the post office a lot of money. 

To learn more, check out our postage quotes below. 

Short postage quotes about reaching the destination

Postage allows our items to get where they need to go. 

1. “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.” — Ernest Rutherford

2. “I dream that my face appears on a postage stamp.” — John Cheever

3. “He picked the postage stamp over the wall with aplomb.” — Tim Flowers

4. “Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.” — Josh Billings

5. “The President of today is just the postage stamp of tomorrow.” — Gracie Allen

6. “I should be a postage stamp. That’s the only way I’ll ever get licked!” — Muhammad Ali

7. “Son, stamp collecting is like life. It stopped being fun a long time ago.” — Homer Simpson

8. “Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap.” — George Bernard Shaw

9. “The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job.” — Napoleon Hill

10. “Ports are necessities, like postage stamps or soap, but they seldom seem to care what impressions they make.” — Elizabeth Bishop

The best postage quotes about stamps and connections

Postage keeps us connected and allows us to get what we need. 

11. “Not philosophers, but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.” — Aldous Huxley

12. “Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.” — Josh Billings

13. “The US head of state grew up on food stamps. The British head of state grew up on the postage stamps.” — Johann Hari

14. “The collecting of stamps brings untold millions of people of all nations into greater understandings of their world neighbors.” — Francis Cardinal Spellman

15. “Designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors on national taste.” — William Butler Yeats

16. “I discovered that my own little postage stamp of native soil was worth writing about and that I would never live long enough to exhaust it.” — William Faulkner

17. “The postage stamp is a flimsy thing, No thicker than a beetle’s wing, And yet it will roam the world for you, Exactly where you tell it to.” — E. V. Lucas

18. “Much of the fun of stamp collecting is knowing from what countries stamps come, when they were printed, and what events they commemorate.” — Daniel Fox

19. “I collect postage stamps. That’s the only thing I can afford to collect! I hope in five years’ time to say, “Yes, I specialize in Gustav Dore first editions.” — Peter Webber

20. “I never needed Panavision and stereophonic sound to woo the world. I did it in black and white on a screen the size of a postage stamp. Honey, that’s talent.” — Mae West

The top postage quotes about the size of the package

Some say everything in life can be postage-sized; others disagree. 

21. “Well, we have a tiny garden. It’s like a postage stamp, so generally, we try to get out to the parks in London as much as possible.” — Kate Garraway

22. “Paint with whatever material you please, with pipes, postage stamps, postcards or playing cards, painted paper, or newspapers.” — Guillaume Apollinaire

23. “He has a chance to make somebody move over on Mount Rushmore. He’s working for his place on the coins and the postage stamps.” — Henry Graff

24. “I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken anymore. If anyone says, ‘Go buy a postage stamp in London,’ I’ll go and do it.” — Emily Mortimer

25. “There ain’t any news in being good. You might write the doings of all the convents of the world on the back of a postage stamp, and have room to spare.” — Finley Peter Dunne

26. “When I was a campaign worker, you would meet people who would want to vote but didn’t have any money for postage. It happens more often than people think.” — Marc Veasey

27. “I love the rebelliousness of snail mail, and I love anything that can arrive with a postage stamp. There’s something about that person’s breath and hands on the letter.” — Diane Lane

28. “I really don’t know where the independent fits in anymore when twenty-five million dollar movies are considered straight-to-video fare. We’re like penny postage stamps.” — Kurt Voss

29. “Everything can’t be a postage-stamp-sized project. Everything can’t be a chamber piece. Musicals aren’t even meant to be that, or identified with it. It’s none of it simple.” — Harold Prince

30. “The Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov once said: In a Democracy, portraits of a nation’s leader should never exceed the size of a postage stamp. That won’t happen so quickly in Russia.” — Vladimir Sorokin

Postage quotes and sayings about snail mail and the internet

The internet impacted postage negatively and positively; find out how with these quotes. 

31. “I use the computer for drawing, composing, and color planning everything, from postage stamps to paintings to architectural-scale installations.” — Michael Craig-Martin

32. “There’s nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can’t see or hear or touch a man, it’s best to let him go.” — John Steinbeck

33. “The United States Postal Service has a problem. People aren’t sending as much mail as they used to. That means less postage revenue and difficulty paying the bills.” — Matthew Yglesias

34. “Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation’s postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail.” — Thomas Mallon

35. “Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power.” — John Kenneth Galbraith

36. “I get a lot of fan mail from girls. It’s interesting because it’s not just the U.S. – you get things from people all over the world. They send these postage stamps, and you’re like, ‘Where do you live?’ It’s crazy. I’ll get letters from the troops, too.” — Jenna Ushkowitz

37. “The pleasure of possession, whether we possess trinkets, or offspring – or possibly books, or prints, or chessmen, or postage stamps – lies in showing these things to friends who are experiencing no immediate urge to look at them.” — Agnes Repplier

38. “Stamp collecting is rich in history and covers virtually every topic, from cartoons to famous actors, politicians, cars, trains, planes, boats, motorcycles, dinosaurs, kings and queens, princes and princesses, historical events, plants, animals, and so much more.” — William F. Sharpe

39. “If the Queen can reject the advice of a minister on a little thing like a postage stamp, what would happen if she rejected the advice of the Prime Minister on a major matter? If the Crown personally can reject advice, then, of course, the whole democratic facade turns out to be false.” — Tony Benn

40. “A lot of sites offer free postage over a certain amount and are pretty cool with you sending stuff back, if you do it within a particular time frame. However, occasionally some sites don’t accept returns on vintage items, so make sure you know that before you spend your cash.” — Dawn O’Porter 

Famous postage quotes and sayings about questioning the postal system

People have questioned the efficiency of the postal system for a long time, and these quotes remind us why. 

41. “Certainly, it is more reasonable to devote one’s life to women than to postage stamps or old snuff boxes, even to pictures or statues. But the example of other collections should be a warning to us to diversify, to have not one woman only but several.” — Marcel Proust

42. “Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don’t they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the postmen can look for them while they deliver the mail?” — Steven Wright

43. “As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.” — William Faulkner

44. “It’s rare that I’m able to get to my desk in the morning without stopping halfway there, turning around, and going in the opposite direction because of a pressing need to straighten all the pictures on the walls, floss my teeth a second time, and make certain that there really are 100 postage stamps in the roll of stamps I bought yesterday.” — Rosemary Mahoney

45. “The question is: do we pay a little bit more now? Or do we pay a whole lot later? For the equivalent of a postage stamp a day for each American, we can put a price on carbon today that will send a signal to private capital to invest in the clean technologies of tomorrow. Taking a vast portfolio of new energy solutions to scale will ultimately drive down costs through competition.” — Van Jones

46. “I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp–brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.” — Anne Carson

47. “Of course, certain religious expressions are fine. If a tribe of Aqualishes wants to boil rhino horns in frog saliva on the National Mall to honor their deity, we’d have a commemorative postage stamp ready by next December. But let a Christian mention the baby Jesus to a kindergarten class, and the ACLU wants an exorcism.” — Kathleen Parker

48. “The social or economic structure of the ideal state is of little concern to me. My desires are modest. Portraits of the head of the government should not exceed a postage stamp in size. No torture and no executions. No music, except coming through earphones, or played in theaters. Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of art.” — Vladimir Nabokov

49. “With full responsibility for my words as a professional biologist, I do not hesitate to say that all existing and genuine knowledge about the way in which the physical characteristics of human communities are related to their cultural capabilities can be written on the back of a postage stamp.” — Lancelot Hogben

50. “Yes, a deep lesson from the postage stamp. It attaches itself to a moveable material, the envelope, and gets going. A good relationship keeps you going forward; a bad one keeps you static. Attach yourself to someone who is also going forward, and you will also get there.” ― Israelmore Ayivor

How did the postal system revolutionize America?

The postal system streamlined how mail was sent and received across the nation. 

Benjamin Franklin was elected as the first postmaster of the United States. 

He adjusted the system the British Crown implemented and made it work for America. 

The founding fathers gave the post office a lot of power.

The Constitution allows Congress to “establish Post Offices and post Roads.” That gives Congress the power to create a postal system and the ability to acquire and control the land for the “post roads” to carry the mail and the buildings needed to maintain the system.

This means that the post office has significant input on our roads and land divisions. 

Abe Lincoln was also a postmaster. 

It is said that he delivered the mail in person, and he was known to stash letters in his giant hat. 

Do you have a favorite postal quote?

Please be sure to let us know in the comments below.