Turtle quotes and tortoise quotes

Famous quotations about turtles and tortoises. You may find your favorite saying or quote here on TurtleSite.com.

Have you ever wondered what famous people had to say about turtles and tortoises? There aren't that many quotes, but we've uncovered a few of them. Read the famous sayings below - you may recognize some of these quotations...

• Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out.
  ~ James Bryant Conant (1893 - 1978)
  
  
• The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
  Which practically conceal its sex.
  I think it clever of the turtle
  In such a fix to be so fertile.
  ~ Ogden Nash (1902 - 1971)
  
  
• Slow and steady wins the race.
  ~ Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC),
     The Hare and the Tortoise
  
  
• 'Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied, 'and the different branches of Arithmetic—Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.'
  ~ Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) Carroll (1832–1898)
     Alice in Wonderland. Chap. x.
  
  
• The two are unrelated. I'm not into turtles or space stuff.
  ~ Harry Connick, Jr., musician, singer, and actor,
     explaining the title of his new album, Star Turtle, 1996.
  
  
• Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
  Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime;
  Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
  Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime?
  ~ George Gordon Noel Byron, Lord Byron (1788–1824)
     The Bride of Abydos. Canto i. Stanza 1.
  
  
• Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.
  ~ Edna St Vincent Millay, Poet and playwright
  
  
• Tortoises are cynics, they always expect the worst.
  Why?
  I dunno, cos it often happens to them I suppose.
  ~ Terry Pratchett, author
  
  
• For, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
  ~ Old Testament, The Song of Solomon ii. 11, 12.
  
  
• You're slower than a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter.
  ~ Dilbert's Words of Wisdom
  
  
• A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.' The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the turtle standing on?' 'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the little old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down.'
  ~ Stephen William Hawking (b. 1942), British theoretical physicist