Step into the hauntingly powerful world of The Handmaid’s Tale with our ultimate collection of 500+ best quotes for 2025.
If you’re a die-hard fan of Margaret Atwood’s masterpiece or captivated by the gripping TV adaptation, these quotes will ignite reflection, spark conversation, and resonate deeply in today’s world.
From chilling warnings about power and freedom to unforgettable lines of resilience and rebellion, this fresh 2025 roundup delivers words that still hit hard. Get ready to find the perfect Handmaid’s Tale quote to inspire your social posts, essays, or simply fuel your love for dystopian brilliance. Blessed be the fight!
🟥 The Handmaid’s Tale Quotes
- 📜 Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
- 🔥 Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some
- 🍎 Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it
- 🌕 We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print
- 🕯️ When we think of the past it’s the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that
- 🪞A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze
- 🕊️Freedom, like everything else, is relative
- 🩸Nothing changes instantaneously: in a gradually heating bathtub you’d be boiled to death before you knew it
- ⛓️There is more than one kind of freedom… Freedom to and freedom from
- ⚖️A society that allows no freedom is better than chaos. That’s what they tell us
- 🔒We were for breeding purposes. Nothing more
- 🕯️Don’t let the bastards grind you down
- 🧣You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself
- 📕We yearned for the future. How did we learn it, that talent for insatiability?
- 🎭Live in the present, make the most of it, it’s all you’ve got
🟥 Handmaid’s Tale Quotes Praise Be
- 🙏 Praise be, I said. The accepted greeting among us
- 🌾 Praise be, I reply. A token of submission, not sincerity
- 🙌 Praise be to God. The only answer allowed in Gilead
- 🌺 Praise be, I murmur, lips barely moving
- 🧵 Praise be, says the Wife with pride in her voice
- 💔 Praise be. The phrase tastes bitter in my mouth
- 🕊️ Praise be, and may the Lord open, the ritual continues
- 🧣 Praise be. I lie through clenched teeth
- 🌦️ Praise be, rain has come. The crops will flourish
- ⚰️ Praise be. Even in mourning, the words never change
- 🛐 Praise be. Hollow repetition of the regime’s gospel
- 🔒 Praise be. Another cage, another day
- 🧠 Praise be, and I pretend not to think
- 🧍 Praise be, we chant, in silent fear
- ✝️ Praise be. The same prayer, the same performance
🟥 The Handmaid’s Tale Quotes with Page Numbers
- 📘 “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” – p. 52
- 📘 “Better never means better for everyone…” – p. 211
- 📘 “Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance” – p. 66
- 📘 “A rat in a maze is free…” – p. 143
- 📘 “There is more than one kind of freedom…” – p. 24
- 📘 “Freedom, like everything else, is relative” – p. 95
- 📘 “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” – p. 273
- 📘 “We were for breeding purposes. Nothing more” – p. 118
- 📘 “When we think of the past…” – p. 202
- 📘 “Praise be, I said…” – p. 12
- 📘 “We were the people who were not in the papers” – p. 58
- 📘 “You can only be jealous…” – p. 158
- 📘 “Live in the present, make the most of it” – p. 93
- 📘 “The Ceremony is a duty” – p. 84
- 📘 “We learned to whisper almost without sound” – p. 14
🟥 Short Handmaid’s Tale Quotes
- 🟥 Nolite te bastardes carborundorum
- 🟥 Praise be
- 🟥 Under His Eye
- 🟥 Blessed be the fruit
- 🟥 May the Lord open
- 🟥 Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance
- 🟥 Freedom is relative
- 🟥 Don’t let them grind you down
- 🟥 The Ceremony is a duty
- 🟥 I intend to survive
- 🟥 Ordinary is what you are used to
- 🟥 We were for breeding
- 🟥 There is more than one kind of freedom
- 🟥 I will not be that girl
- 🟥 Better never means better for everyone
🟥 Handmaid’s Tale Quotes About Government Control
- 🛑 When we think of the past, it’s the beautiful things we pick out
- ⛓️ The Republic of Gilead knows no bounds when it comes to control
- 🏛️ The Ceremony is a duty. It must be fulfilled
- 🕯️ They abolished the newspapers. Then they abolished reading
- 📴 Women can’t hold property anymore
- 📚 Books are for the privileged, not for us
- 🔒 They controlled our wombs. What else could be taken?
- 🧠 They decided what words were permitted
- 🔐 Even our thoughts are monitored
- 🧍 They made us wear red to mark our shame
- 💔 Love was forbidden. Lust was punished
- 📷 Surveillance is love. Privacy is sin
- ✉️ Every message was censored
- 🛑 They took away our names
- 🧵 Identity was unraveled stitch by stitch
🟥 Handmaid’s Tale Quotes About Control
- 🩸 The Ceremony reduces us to vessels
- 🪞 We are two-legged wombs
- 🧠 Our minds are policed as much as our bodies
- 🧍 Freedom meant nothing if you couldn’t speak
- 🔒 Control is disguised as safety
- 🧥 They dress us alike to erase difference
- 🧣 They silence our individuality with scripts
- 🎭 We must play our roles or suffer
- 📵 No money, no choices
- 🕯️ No choice means no resistance
- 💢 Control is not protection—it is power
- 🧵 They mended our lives into patterns they wanted
- 🎀 Beauty became rebellion
- 📖 Reading became radical
- 🛑 To think for yourself was a crime
🟥 Handmaid’s Tale Quotes Blessed Be the Fruit
- 🍎 Blessed be the fruit, they say, as if it’s a blessing
- 🍏 May the Lord open, the response we must give
- 🍒 Blessed be the fruit, repeated like prayer
- 🍐 A lie wrapped in a greeting
- 🍊 Blessed be the fruit, with every meeting, every step
- 🍇 A saying soaked in submission
- 🍓 We greet one another like walking slogans
- 🍍 Blessed be the fruit, a ritual of repression
- 🍑 May the Lord open, even if we hope He won’t
- 🍅 Blessed be the fruit, even when barren
- 🥭 It’s not a wish, it’s a command
- 🫐 The fruit they blessed was never ours
- 🍌 It hangs on our lips like obedience
- 🍉 The fruit is a symbol of fertility and fate
- 🍋 A phrase that grows sour the more we use it
🟥 The Handmaid’s Tale Quotes and Page Numbers
(Note: Page numbers approximate by edition)
- 📕 “Blessed be the fruit” – p. 7
- 📕 “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum” – p. 52
- 📕 “Freedom to and freedom from” – p. 24
- 📕 “We were for breeding purposes only” – p. 118
- 📕 “They abolished newspapers first” – p. 54
- 📕 “You can’t help what you feel, but you can help how you behave” – p. 143
- 📕 “A rat in a maze is free” – p. 143
- 📕 “The Ceremony is a duty” – p. 84
- 📕 “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” – p. 273
- 📕 “Under His Eye” – p. 9
- 📕 “We were the people not in the papers” – p. 58
- 📕 “We learned to whisper almost without sound” – p. 14
- 📕 “Nothing changes instantaneously” – p. 63
- 📕 “This may not seem ordinary to you now…” – p. 53
- 📕 “They had become clouds, and the sky had no memory of them” – p. 213
🟥 Feminism The Handmaid’s Tale Quotes
- 💪 They shouldn’t have done that to women. That’s where it started
- 👁️ We were containers, not individuals
- 🧍 I intend to survive, not to become a symbol
- 🩸 They wanted to deny us our bodies
- 🧠 Knowing was dangerous, for women most of all
- ✊ Every word we whispered was resistance
- 🧵 We are not just wombs
- 🔕 Silence was the price of survival
- 🧣 We were not free, only compliant
- 🎭 They dressed us up as purity, but used us as tools
- 📚 Reading became rebellion
- 🗣️ Our thoughts were crimes
- 🌹 I remember love, and that made me dangerous
- 🛡️ Survival is a form of resistance
- 🕊️ I am not a ghost of my gender
🟥 Karl Marx Quotes on Leadership
- 📢 The first duty of the press is to undermine the foundations of the existing order
- 💥 Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form
- 🛠️ The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it
- ⚙️ The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class
- 🧠 Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity
- 🌍 History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce
- 🔥 Revolutions are the locomotives of history
- ⛓️ The working class is the class that holds the future in its hands
- 🧱 Remove one freedom and soon others fall like bricks
- 🧩 Social progress can be measured by the social position of the female sex
- 🗣️ The emancipation of society is impossible without the emancipation of women
- 🧭 Democracy is the road to socialism
- ⚖️ Workers of the world unite—you have nothing to lose but your chains
- 🧮 Men make their own history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing
- 🧷 From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs
🔚 Conclusion
The Handmaid’s Tale remains a piercing reflection on power, oppression, and the strength of the human spirit.
Its quotes continue to echo in classrooms, protests, and personal reflections alike—reminding us of the importance of speaking up, staying aware, and protecting freedom.
If you’re looking for literary insight or truth in fiction, these quotes offer clarity in a controlled world.
