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