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Small Quotes

Big ideas about being underestimated.

Several of these small quotes come from people describing being dismissed early — a company written off as minor before it grew, a hometown that never gets credited. If scale itself interests you more, the Big collection makes the opposite case.

My aunt used to call me light bulb head because my head is small at the bottom and bigger at the top. But it was a term of endearment.

Quotes by Tyra Banks

I grew up in northern California in a town called Fairfield, which is kind of exactly between San Francisco and Sacramento, a small suburb. And I'm the youngest of five children.

Quotes by Tracy K. Smith

I grew up in a small town, in a small community, and I would not have had access to great plays when I was a kid were it not for the films of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'Cat...

Quotes by Tracy Letts

My head is pretty small.

Quotes by Torrey Smith

A 'township' in the U.S. is a small area. In South Africa it's a place designated for non-white people during the apartheid.

Quotes by Topaz Page-Green

American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies.

Quotes by Tony Judt

Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headline.

Quotes by Tony Blair

My home town is very small and very remote and we don't have a movie house.

Quotes by Tommy Lee Jones

The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.

Quotes by Tom Waits

I didn't grow up with my Kenyan family. I grew up in a small, conservative suburb of Chicago.

Quotes by Tom Morello

I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders.

Quotes by Tom Morello

I find that even small changes sometimes jog you out of a mental rut.

Quotes by Tom Perrotta

It is precisely because neither individuals nor small groups can be fully self-sufficient that cooperation is necessary to human survival and flourishing.

Quotes by Tom G. Palmer

Any movie that gets made and ends up in a position where people are coming to talk about it, it's not a small thing.

Quotes by Tom Cavanagh

Anyone who's taken a lot of creative-writing classes, or taught creative writing, has learned to dread a certain kind of manuscript. It's long, for one thing. It has irritatingly small type; it's grammatically meticulous when it comes to everything but...

Quotes by Tom Bissell

As the son of a small business owner, I know how regulatory overreach can stifle our economy and cost Americans jobs.

Quotes by Todd Young

Family farms and small businesses are the backbone of our communities.

Quotes by Tom Allen

It's incredible in our sport how small the differences are, and we are all aware of that. We're all on a high level and skiing well, and at the end, it's just hundredths that count. Maybe it's just one finger...

Quotes by Tina Maze

When I was a carpenter, I built sets for small storefront Chicago companies. Like, I built sets for friends of mine at The House Theater.

Quotes by Timothy Simons

The foyers now look ridiculously small to us because not all that many people used them.

Quotes by Timothy West

Frequently Asked Questions

Do these quotes only talk about small in terms of size?
Not at all — "small" here ranges from company size to towns to personal ambition. One speaker even once thought a company was "a small company ripping off our copyrights," before it turned out to be a much bigger deal than expected. For more on how scale plays out in the working world, see Business quotes.
What do these quotes say about small towns?
One is blunt about it: "Small towns are the worst for getting recognised." It's a candid take on how a smaller community can limit visibility or opportunity, at least in this speaker's experience.
Is being small always seen negatively in these quotes?
No — one turns it into something aspirational: "I want to be in the small percentage of women who don't settle for conventional roles." Here, "small" describes an exclusive, admirable group rather than a limitation. If you'd rather explore the opposite end of scale, Big quotes covers bigger ambitions too.
How does this collection compare small and great?
One quote draws a direct contrast: "Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous." It suggests smallness here is linked to pettiness, while greatness is linked to generosity of spirit. Explore that idea further in Great quotes.
Is there a common thread tying these small quotes together?
Mostly that "small" is relative here — it can mean underestimated, limiting, exclusive, or even petty depending on context, and these four quotes touch on nearly every version of that. For more everyday words examined from every angle, check out Always quotes.

Others use the word to describe standing apart from convention rather than physical size, and one older line frames small speech as narrow-minded rather than short. Compare with Great quotes or Business quotes for related angles.