20 Words of Actual Wisdom From Fictional Characters

We don’t ask a lot of our fictional characters. All they really need to do is move the plot forward, perform some sweet roundhouse kicks, and be hilariously good-looking. We don’t need them to be smart, too — that would just be greedy.

Still, sometimes they accidentally utter a profundity or two. For Redditor Mike_Aurand, it was when Bond villain Elliot Carver said in Tomorrow Never Dies, “The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success,” or when Robert De Niro told Al Pacino, “Don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner,” in Heat.

Come to think of it, both of those lines are really bad advice. Like, that guy is literally a Bond villain. Nevertheless, they still proceeded to ask r/AskReddit, “What’s the best life lesson you’ve ever learned from a fictional character?”