Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Words of Wisdom from the Movies
“As a lawyer, I’ve had to learn that people aren’t just good or bad. People are many things.”
This line is spoken by Paul Beigler, a fictional small-town lawyer brilliantly played by Jimmy Stewart in the courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder. I don’t want to have to summarize the whole movie (if you haven’t seen it, though, please make sure to do so; it’s a great flick and also features George C. Scott in what I believe was his film debut), so I’m going to oversimplify the context of the scene.
Basically, Beigler is trying to convince a woman named Mary Pliant to help him gain testimony from another person that her old friend and benefactor, Barney Quill, raped a woman. Mary Pliant is reluctant to believe or help prove this accusation about a man who was always so kind and loving to her, which is what leads to Beigler speaking the line I just quoted.
It’s a line that has always stuck with me and comes to my mind from time to time when I learn of respected figures who are then revealed to have committed awful crimes. I thought of the line during the recent news stories involving Bill Cosby, and again this evening when talking on the phone with my sister. My sister just learned that a member of her ward (the Mormon term for a congregation), a seemingly very spiritual and kind family man who had only a few weeks earlier delivered a very moving talk in church, has just been arrested for molesting his daughter. He had been molesting her for the past five years and had threatened his family that he would kill them if any of them reported it, but (thank God) the daughter finally went to the authorities.
My sister’s understandably shaken by the news. I think most if not all adults understand that you never really know for certain whether someone you know is leading a double life, but it’s always shocking to learn that a seemingly decent person can in fact commit and hide such monstrous crimes. I mentioned the line from Anatomy of a Murder to my sister as we talked.
It’s a quote that I really do believe. While it can be easy to sort people as “good” or “bad,” the fact is that everyone is a mix of both. An individual can be sincere in doing good towards others in many aspects of their life, yet also do some despicable things to others in other aspects of their life. The good a person does does not excuse their crimes or pardon them from the justice they must face, but neither does one’s crimes invalidate the value of the good that they do either, or their sincerity in doing so.
In the simplest terms, people are complicated. This is not a new or earth-shattering observation, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard or read that little nugget of truth expressed as affectingly (to me personally) as in that scene from Anatomy of a Murder.
Which brings me to the topic of this post. As much as I love movies, generally I don’t look to them as fonts of wisdom. The primary goal of movie producers are, after all, to just make an entertaining and popular product for their audience. And when movies do attempt to impart some moral lesson, observation on life, or inspirational creed, the words they use often don’t rise above the cliche or even banal (“Follow your heart,” “All you have to do is believe in yourself,” “On our own, we can’t beat [the big bad], but together we can!”). However, a screenwriter sometimes writes a line of dialogue that really is profound or eloquent and can change, or at least help clarify, the way we think about something.
So I wanted to ask the Ricochetti: What are lines from movies that you think are true words of wisdom to remember? I’m not talking about just favorite lines of dialogue, but specifically the ones you found to be powerful/insightful and that have stuck with you through the years.
Published in Entertainment
— Morpheus, The Matrix
— General Leslie Groves, Fat Man and Little Boy
— Central Services TV commercial, Brazil
Breaker Morant
“Who is going to watch the watchers?” –Enemy of the State
No matter how oversight is arranged, you eventually have to trust somebody.
“As the Good Book says: If you spit in the air, it lands in your face.”
“And because of our traditions, every man knows who he is and what God expects of him.” — Tevya, Fiddler on the Roof
Which is simply to say that we are more free today, but that freedom comes at a price.
“We deal in lead, friend.”
“Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
–Alfred, from The Dark Knight
A man should know his own limitations. Dirty Harry
Jimmy Stewart giving advice to his future son in law in Shenandoah
“If Earthlings don’t constantly exercise their jaws, their brains start to work.” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
“I dunno. Coast guard?” – Homer Simpson
“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends. It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace. They never are.” – George R. R. Martin
“Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it.” – The Fellowship of The Rings (movie)
“It’s never too early to learn that the government is a greedy piglet that suckles on a taxpayer’s teat until they have sore, chapped nipples.” – Ron Swanson
“Who is more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?” – Obi Wan Kenobi
“If you do not master your rage, rage will become your master.” – The Sphynx (Mystery Men)
“Just don’t look.” – Lisa Simpson and Paul Anka
https://cdn.ricochet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/justdontlook.mp4
“Hey man, there’s a beverage here!”
(from The Big Lebowski)
It’s not deep, but it is funny.
Do YouTube videos count as “movies”?
If yes, then I submit the following:
“If you fail to find something to rebel against, you can rebel against that failure. That is the beauty of existentialism, it opposes itself.” – Henri, le chat noir
“You’re not wrong. You’re just an A-Hole.” – The Big Lebowski
Deep and funny.
“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”
McLintock! might be one of the most quotable movies of all time.
[after informing his daughter that she won’t inherit most of his property]: Now that may not seem like much, but it’s more than we had, your mother and I. Some folks are gonna say I’m doin’ all this so I can sit up in the hereafter and look down on a park named after me, or that I was disappointed in you – didn’t want you to get all that money. But the real reason, Becky, is because I love you, and I want you and some young man to have what I had, because all the gold in the United States Treasury and all the harp music in heaven can’t equal what happens between a man and a woman with all that growin’ together.
Boy, you’ve got it all wrong. I don’t give jobs. I hire men. [….] And for that I’ll pay you a fair day’s wage. You won’t give me anything and I won’t give you anything. We both hold up our heads.
You have to be a man first before you’re a gentleman.
To be maximally fair, Philippa Boyens, who wrote the prologue, and I think it is no small measure of her brilliance that she had her prologue narrated by Galadriel, the last native Quenya speaker left in the Third Age of Middle-Earth, and who certainly does remember. I think a great deal hinges on Cate Blanchett’s wonderful performance, too, but as Sir Ian McKellan observes in the commentaries, “I don’t know that the audience recognizes it’s Galadriel. They may recognize it’s Cate Blanchett, but at this point that’s not quite the same thing, is it?”
“Nobody believes we’re going to make it do they? Everybody thinks we’re going to fail.”
“Yes. But you just described every great success story.” from Say Anything
“They’re called boobs, Ed.” – Erin Brokovich
Ok, if you are going to let in that last quote, I think you will allow me this classic, even though the deep thought only comes at the end:
“I’ve… seen things… you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate… All those… moments… will be lost, in time, like [chokes up] tears… in… rain. Time… to die.”
-Bladerunner
And from Rutger Hauer, not screenwriter David Peoples.
If we’re allowing TV then: “Your mother and I are rich. You [the child] have nothing.” -Cliff Huxtable
From People Will Talk:
“I consider faith properly injected into a patient as effective in maintaining life as Adrenaline, and a belief in miracles has been the difference between living and dying as often as any surgeon’s scalpel.”