In the present paper we investigate some functional inequalities which are closely connected with quadratic functionals. In particular, we are interested in inequalities of the type D(f) (x, y) >= phi (x, y) (for all x, y,) where D is given and f and phi are unknown. One of the theorems presented provides a characterization of the inner product in a real inner product space of dimension greater than two. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.