20 Movie and TV Quotes That Actually Mean Something

Screenwriters love to sound profound, but some of the most quoted lines they’ve written are also some of the most obvious, puddle-deep platitudes adorning high school yearbooks the world over. “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” “Oh my god, Karen, you can’t just ask somebody why they’re white.” Anyone who was learning life lessons from them probably needs around-the-clock supervision.

But sometimes, they do land somewhere so true yet so novel that you can’t get it out of your head, even if it came from the mouth of a cartoon. For Redditor AmOdd, it was something good old Uncle Iroh said in an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender: “It is important to draw wisdom from different places. If you take it from only one place it becomes rigid and stale.”

He was talking about the different elemental nations, but it’s just as true when it comes to Wikipedia. They then asked r/AskReddit, “What did a fictional character say that stuck with you?” and Reddit quickly shared the wise words from such characters that they’ve never been able to shake.