ShortList is supported by you, our amazing readers. When you click through the links on our site and make a purchase we may earn a commission. Learn more

100 amazing pieces of advice from movies

Don't just watch, listen

While it's normally standard practice to seek advice from parents, teachers, doctors, policemen and fortune tellers, people just don't give enough credit to the fountain of knowledge that is the cinema.

Instructing us on how to see ourselves and the world around us, screenwriters have been acting as unappreciated and extremely helpful friends for years now and we think it's only fair to give them the credit they deserve.

So here are 100 pieces of advice spouted by characters that we should really do some listening to.


Fight Club

"You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

Tyler Durden

Rocky

"Until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life!"

Rocky Balboa

The Magnificent Seven

"Sometimes you have to bend with the breeze or you break."

Vin Tanner

The Empire Strikes Back

"Named must your fear be before banish it you can."

Yoda

Teen Wolf

"There are three rules that I live by: never get less than twelve hours sleep; never play cards with a guy who has the same first name as a city; and never get involved with a woman with a tattoo of a dagger on her body."

Coach Flinstock

The Social Network

"When you go fishing you can catch a lot of fish, or you can catch a big fish. You ever walk into a guy's den and see a picture of him standing next to fourteen trout?"

Sean ParkerThe Shawshank Redemption

"Get busy living or get busy dying"

Andy Dufresne

Memento

"We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are."

Leonard Shelby

Batman Begins

"Men fear most what they cannot see."

Henri Ducar

Braveheart

"We all end up dead, it's just a question of how and why."

William Wallace

The Karate Kid

"Man who catch fly with chopstick accomplish anything."

Mr. Miyagi

Swingers

"There's nothing wrong with letting the girls know that you're money and that you want to party."

Trent

V For Vendetta

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

V

Wedding Crashers

"Funerals are insane, the chicks are so horny, its not even fair, its like fishing with dynamite."

Chazz Reinhold

Good Will Hunting

"Real loss is only possible when you love something more than you love yourself."

Sean Maguire

Dodgeball

"If you can dodge traffic, you can dodge a ball."

Patches O'Houlihan

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

Gandalf

Almost Famous

"The only true currency in this bankrupt world... is what you share with someone else when you're uncool."

Lester Bangs

Leon

"Revenge is not good. Once you're done. Believe me."

Leon

The Godfather

"Because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."

Don Corleone

The Big Lebowski

“Life does not stop and start at your convenience.”

Walter Sobchak

Million Dollar Baby

"Sometimes the best way to deliver a punch is to step back... But step back too far and you ain't fighting at all."

Scrap

Back To the Future

"If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

Marty McFly

Ben-Hur

“You ask how to fight an idea. I’ll tell you how. With another idea.”

Messala

Saw III

"Death is a surprise party. Unless of course you're already dead on the inside."

Jigsaw

Any Given Sunday

“When you get old, in life, things get taken from you. I mean, that's a part of life. But, you only learn that when you start losing stuff."

Tony D'Amato

The Outlaw Of Josey Wales

"If you lose your head and you give up, then you neither live nor win. That's just the way it is."

Josey Wales

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid

“Don’t ever hit your mother with a shovel. It leaves a dull impression on her mind.”

Butch Cassidy

The Cable Guy

“You know what the trouble about real life is? There's no danger music.”

The Cable Guy

Cool Runnings

"A gold medal is a wonderful thing. But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough with one."

Irv

The Dark Knight

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free.”

The Joker

Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”

Willy Wonka

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

"It's hard for something to grow on something that's moving."

RP McMurphy

Manhattan

“Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage.”

Isaac

Lost In Translation

“The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

Bob Harris

Inglourious Basterds

“Facts can be so misleading, where rumors, true or false, are often revealing.”

Col. Hans Landa

The Expendables

“The man who best gets along with women is the man who can get along without them.”

Barney Ross

Spider-Man

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

Uncle Ben

Full Metal Jacket

“The dead only know one thing – it is better to be alive.”

Pvt. Joker

Swimming With Sharks

“If they can't start a meeting without you, well, that's a meeting worth going to, isn't it? And that's the only kind of meeting you should ever concern yourselves with.”

Buddy Ackerman

Gandhi

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Pulp Fiction

“Just because you are a character doesn't mean that you have character.”

Winston Wolfe

The Town

“No matter how much you change, you still got to pay the price for the things you’ve done.”

Doug MacRay

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

“A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it’s the only weapon we have.”

Roger Rabbit

The Weather Man

“Do you know that the harder thing to do and the right thing to do are usually the same thing? Nothing that has meaning is easy.”

Robert Spritzel

The Killer Inside Me

“Nobody has it coming. That’s why no one sees it coming.”

Lou Ford

Amelie

"It's better to help people than garden gnomes."

Amelie

Natural Born Killers

“In this day and age a man has to have choices; a man has to have a little bit of variety.”

Mickey Knox

Greenberg

“It’s huge to finally embrace the life you never planned on.”

Ivan Schrank

Once Upon A Time In The West

“Taking it easy is the first thing a businessman should do.”

Harmonica

Office Space

"Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about about mission statements."

Peter Gibbons

A Single Man

“Experience is not what happens to a man, it’s what a man does with what happens to him.”

George

Die Hard

"Now, you listen to me, jerk-off, if you're not a part of the solution, you're a part of the problem."

John McClane

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

“Constantly talking isn't necessarily communicating.”

Joel Barish

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

"-Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself."

Ferris Bueller

Ghostbusters

"If someone asks if you are a god, you say, "yes!""

Winston Zeddemore

Dan In Real Life

“Love is not a feeling, it's an ability.”

Dan Burns

Invictus

"Forgiveness liberates the soul, it removes fear."

Nelson Mandela

12 Angry Men

“Wherever you run into it, prejudice always obscures the truth.”

Juror #8

Little Miss Sunshine

“Losers are people who are so afraid of not winning, they don't even try.”

Edwin Hoover

Revolutionary Road

“I just happen to think people are better off doing something they actually like.”

Frank Wheeler

Stand By Me

“Kids lose everything unless there's someone there to look out for them.”

Chris Chambers

Knocked Up

"Marriage is like a tense, unfunny version of Everybody Loves Raymond, only it doesn't last 22 minutes. It lasts forever."

Pete

Bridesmaids

"You're your problem...and you're also your solution. "

Megan

Colors

“You don't want to get laid, man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to talk to them.”

Danny McGavin

Cocktail

“Never tell tales about a woman. No matter how far away she is, she'll always hear you.”

Doug Coughlin

Goodfellas

"If you're part of a crew, nobody ever tells you that they're going to kill you, doesn't happen that way."

Henry Hill

Gran Torino

“The thing that haunts a man the most is what he isn’t ordered to do.”

Walt Kowalski

Angel Heart

“There's enough religion in the world to make men hate each other, but not enough to make them love.”

Louis Cyphre

Dazed and Confused

"The older you get, the more rules they are going to try and get you to follow"

Wooderson

Van Wilder

“Worrying is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but it doesn't get you anywhere.”

Van Wilder

The Dish

“Failure is never quite so frightening as regret.”

Cliff Buxton

The NeverEnding Story

"Never give up and good luck will find you."

Falcor

One Hour Photo

“Nobody takes a picture of something they want to forget.”

Seymour Parrish

The Princess Bride

"Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

Man In Black

Unbreakable

“You know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you’re here.”

Elijah Price

The Usual Suspects

"A man can convince anyone he's someone else but never himself."

Verbal Kint

Risky Business

"College women can smell ignorance"

Joel Goodson

Wanted

"We don't know how far the ripples of our decisions go."

Fox

Airplane!

"Flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes."

Rex Kramer

School Of Rock

"If you wanna rock, you gotta break the rules. You gotta get mad at the man!"

Dewey Finn

Wayne's World

"Marriage is punishment for shoplifting in some countries."

Wayne Campbell

Scream

"Life is like a movie. Only you can't pick your genre."

Billy Loomis

Sleuth

“Sex is the game. Marriage is the penalty.”

Andrew Wyke

This Is Spinal Tap

“It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”

David St. Hubbins

Up In The Air

“Life’s better with company. Everybody needs a co-pilot.”

Ryan Bingham

The Breakfast Club

“Screws fall out all the time, the world is an imperfect place.”

John Bender

Troy

“War is young men dying and old men talking.”

Odysseus

Caddyshack

“Two wrongs don't make a right but three rights will make a left.”

Ty Webb

Reds

“If you want to have freedom, you’ve got to go where the freedom is.”

John Reed

Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone

“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but a great deal more to stand up to your friends.”

Dumbledore

Tropic Thunder

"Being an actor's no different than being a rugby player or construction worker, save for the fact that my tools are the mechanisms which trigger human emotion."

Kirk Lazarus

The Naked Gun 2 1/2

"Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with the seat missing, but it hurts."

Frank Drebin

To Kill A Mockingbird

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. ... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."

Atticus Finch

Che: Part One

“The opportunities of most people are determined by forces they do not even see.”

Che Guevara

The Color Of Money

“Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.”

Fast Eddie Felson

Blue Velvet

“There are opportunities in life for gaining knowledge and experience. Sometimes it is necessary to take a risk.”

Jeffrey Beaumont

Big Fish

“The more difficult something is, the more rewarding it is in the end.”

Ed Bloom

Adaptation

“You are what you love not what loves you.”

Charlie Kaufman

Kill Bill: Volume One

"When fortune smiles on something as violent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no other, that not only does God exist, you're doing His will."

The Bride