40 Inspirational and Funny Thanksgiving Quotes

Nellah McGough

It’s the beginning of the most wonderful time of year. Thanksgiving is a time for gathering with friends and family over delicious home-cooked meals. It’s a day set out for gratitude, for giving thanks for all that we have with the people who mean so much. To celebrate this comforting holiday, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorite quotes that capture the true spirit of the season.

We have thanksgiving quotes for every mood, from deep expressions of gratitude to funny remarks on family. Recite these quotes and prayers at your Thanksgiving table to inspire the crowd, then throw in a few of our favorite Thanksgiving jokes to earn some laughs. After all, nothing gets the party started like a good turkey pun.

Happy Thanksgiving Quotes

  • Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. —George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation, October 3, 1789

  • Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don’t unravel. —Unknown

  • “I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.” —Henry David Thoreau

  • “Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.” —Native American Saying

  • “Showing gratitude is one of the simplest yet most powerful things humans can do for each other.” – Randy Pausch

  • “We should certainly count our blessings, but we should also make our blessings count.” —Neal A. Maxwell

  • “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.” – Melody Beattie

  • “When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” —Willie Nelson

  • “What if, today, we were grateful for everything?” —Charlie Brown

  • “Thanksgiving just gets me all warm and tingly and all kinds of wonderful inside.” —Willard Scott

  • “Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” —Oprah Winfrey

  • “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” —Meister Eckhart

  • “Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: It must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all.” —William Faulkner

  • “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” —Ernest Hemingway

  • “Give thanks for a little and you will find a lot.” —Hansa Proverb

  • “Pie makes everybody happy.” – Laurie Halse Anderson

  • “Forever on Thanksgiving Day the heart will find the pathway home.” —Wilbur D. Nesbit

  • “If you are really thankful, what do you do? You share.” —W. Clement Stone

  • “Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our Thanksgiving.” – W.T. Purkiser

  • “If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily.” —Gerald Good

  • “Be present in all things and thankful for all things.” – Maya Angelou

  • “Thanksgiving Day is a good day to recommit our energies to giving thanks and just giving.” —Amy Gran

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Funny Thanksgiving Quotes

  • “It’s not the minutes spent at the table that put on weight, it’s the seconds.” —Unknown

  • “After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” —Oscar Wilde

  • “Thanksgiving, man! Not a good day to be my pants.” —Kevin James

  • "Coexistence: What the farmer does with the turkey—until Thanksgiving." – Mike Connolly

  • "If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it’s really like making a large chicken." – Ina Garten

  • “My mom makes something called green pie, which I thought was a delicacy that many people only had at Thanksgiving, but it turns out it was just Jello with whipped cream on it. And it’s delicious.” —Bobby Moynihan

  • “Thanksgiving dinners take 18 hours to prepare. They are consumed in 12 minutes. Half-times take 12 minutes. This is not a coincidence.” – Erma Bombeck

  • "I suppose I will die never knowing what pumpkin pie tastes like when you have room for it." – Robert Brault

  • “Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread, and pumpkin pie.” – Jim Davis

  • "I can't cook a Thanksgiving dinner. All I can make is cold cereal and maybe toast." – Charlie Brown

  • “I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.” —Erma Bombeck

  • "It's not too much food. This is what we've been training for our whole lives. This is our destiny, this is our finest hour." – Lorelai Gilmore, Gilmore Girls

  • "We may not have it all together, but together, we have it all." – Anonymous

  • “The turkey. The sweet potatoes. The stuffing. The pumpkin pie. Is there anything else we all can agree so vehemently about? I don’t think so.” – Nora Ephron

  • “What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” —Erma Bombeck

  • “I like football. I find it's an exciting strategic game. It's a great way to avoid conversation with your family at Thanksgiving.” – Craig Ferguson

  • “An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.” —Irv Kupcine

  • “Good mashed potato is one of the great luxuries of life” – Lindsey Bareham