Top 86 Understatement Quotes & Sayings

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time, to say high Anglo-Catholic would be a real English understatement.

To say the 'Save My Soul' video means a lot to me would be an understatement of stupendous proportions.

To say that my dad pushed me is an understatement. I was never naturally drawn to football.

Films like 'The Godfather,' 'Chinatown' and 'The Exorcist' brought a realism and currency and understatement to their genres that we wanted for 'Mildred Pierce.'

We look our best in subdued colors, sophisticated cuts, and a general air of sleek understatement.

The understatement is the English contribution to comedy.

Who said that clothes make a statement? What an understatement that was. Clothes never shut up.

To say I was looking forward to fighting in Mexico for the first time is an understatement.

It would be gross understatement to say that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not a model of clarity. It is in many important respects a model of ambiguity or indeed even self-contradiction.

People used to say obvious things ironically or as a form of understatement, but in the last few decades they seem to say it with a sense of discovery, and it worries me.

If God miraculously created all that is, including you and me, then to say that we need miracles is an understatement. Our only response to that idea should be undying gratitude.

To say that I am organized is an understatement, but my car tells a different story.

Kenney knows two essential truths about melodrama: First that it is most powerful when combined with irony and understatement; and second that it is a salient feature of modern life.

I was 18 when I was presented with the Arjuna Award. To say it feels really good would be an understatement. But I don't know how else to convey the feeling. I am grateful for having received this prestigious award at such a young age.

Kitten, this is my best mate, Charles, but you can call him Spade. Charles, this is Cat, the woman I’ve been telling you about. You can see for yourself that everything I’ve said is…an understatement.

You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person I have ever known—and even that is an understatement.

When you hear that China is overcrowded, that's an understatement. I was shocked at the number of people. Even in the rural areas. I was also shocked at the poverty and at the living conditions.

In 1975, I left the burning city of Beirut for the quiet insanity of England. To say that short, frail and wispy 15-year-old me didn't fit in would be such an understatement as to be a joke.

The quotation-business is booming. No subdivision of the culture seems too narrow to have a quotation book of its own.... It would be an understatement to say that these books lean on one another. To compare them is to stroll through a glorious jungle of incestuous mutual plagiarism.

My modus operandi has always been understatement and that just doesn't really work in pop.

I have a T-shirt that says, 'Ball is life.' My wife says 'That's an understatement for you.'

I'm pretty blessed when it comes to clear skin. I owe that to being Cape Verdian. My whole family has great skin. My grandfather is 80 but doesn't look a day over 50. And we all love the sun, too, so blessed is an understatement!

I'm a coyote shapeshifter playing in a world of werewolves and vampires---outmatched is n understatement.

To say that the grocery business is cutthroat would be a major understatement.

To say that I loved school would be an understatement. It was my oasis, my sanctuary.

The English have no soul; they have the understatement instead.

... the understatement, the self-ridicule, the delight in the foreignness of foreigners, the complete denial of any attempt to enlist the sympathies of his readers in the hardships he has capriciously invited.

Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist.

I don't like being flattered. It doesn't suit my English sensibilities. Remember, we are the great country of understatement.

Hours is an understatement. I honestly don't know how the director and editor decide each week what actually makes it on the air. There's of course director and cast commentary on each episode on the DVD. We had a blast recording that.

My mom wasn't a good cook. No, that was an understatement. She was really horrible. And in a Chinese family, that's a disaster.

A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.

To say that the vote fraud conspiracy theorists are tilting at windmills is an understatement. They're using a legitimate public process to pursue an agenda that is, at best, grasping at straws and, at worse, partisan.

Here`s what I`m curious about. For the president of Mexico, this man, Donald Trump, is, it`s probably not an understatement to say, despised by many Mexicans.

Baikida Carroll, whose balance of bravada and tenderness, facility and understatement mark him as a player to be reckoned with.

My father was a really funny guy. He lived a good long life. And he was the reason I wanted to be funny and become a comedian and a comedy writer, so to say that he's somewhat of a mythic figure in my life would be an understatement.

I first decided that I wanted to act when I was 9. And I was at a very bizarre prep school at the time; to say 'high Anglo-Catholic' would be a real English understatement.

Cristal go by the cases, wait hold up that was racist I would prefer the Aces, ain't no different when you taste it. A 40 ounce to chase it, that's just an understatement.

In 2007, when I was governor of New York, I proposed that our state once again permit undocumented immigrants to obtain a driver's license. To say the proposal lit a firestorm in the political arena is an understatement.

Gillard is as likeable as Rudd is charmless. She is self-deprecating; he is ludicrously vainglorious. She is a mistress of understatement; he is a ranter.

However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.

To say I live a cursed life is an understatement. I have to get up every day and work with people who are not as successful as me nor will they ever be as successful as me. Nobody knows the struggles I go through.

To say I love the Christmas season at our home in the South of France is an understatement. I get such a kick out of preparing the house for the arrival of family; seeing our scruffy old villa bursting at the seams with loved ones.

Yeah, something was wrong. That was the understatement of the year.

To say I like social media is an understatement.

Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement.

To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion.

Diwali is chaotic in the Kapoor household, and that's an understatement. I normally throw a huge card party with all my close friends and my close knit group from the industry.

The black man's journey within the genre of grappling wasn't unlike the challenges their brethren faced in professional sports, entertainment and, most importantly, everyday life. To say it was challenging would be a massive understatement.

I was, in the 1960s, in a marriage. To use the word 'bad' would be perhaps the understatement of the year. It was dreadful.

Whatever I'd say would be an understatement. I can only say my life was made much better by knowing him. He was one of the greatest people I've ever known, as a man, a friend, and a musician.

Crude at first [the short story] received a literary polish in the press, but its dominant quality remained. It was concise and condense, yet suggestive. It was delightfully extravagant - or a miracle of understatement

To say that Sputnik gave rise to some concern in the United States would be the understatement of the century. The truth is that the US went apeshit

David Wong is like a mash-up of Douglas Adams and Stephen King . . . ‘page-turner’ is an understatement.

A lot of men who have accepted - or had imposed upon them in boyhood - the old English public school styles of careful modesty in speech, with much understatement, have behind their masks an appalling and impregnable conceit of themselves.

Am I blessed? That would be an understatement.

It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice.

I think time management and dedication are the main factors along with being an organized person. To say I was highly ambitious would be an understatement. I'm never one to sit around, I always have to be creating in various facets to keep myself entertained.

Even the revolutionary writer will err if he fails to grasp the enormous effectiveness of occasional understatement.

Richard Stark writes a harsh and frightening story of criminal warfare and vengeance with economy, understatement and a deadly amoral objectivity-a remarkable addition to the list of the shockers that the French call roman noirs.