A Commonplace Book

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose minds are not strong enough to master her.

Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless you are quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the mother of Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and Queen Mary Tudor.

All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around you. Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents, insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They all dress funny -- and they all succeed. Are you catching on?

...we go about our business or we take to dope, the dope which is worse by far than opium or hashish--I mean the newspapers, the radio, the movies. Real dope gives you the freedom to dream your own dreams; the American kind forces you to swallow the perverted dreams of men whose only ambition is to hold their job regardless of what they are bidden to do.

"I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics."

"...(sometimes) we miss the incredible lesson that nature has to teach us, the lesson of how to just be. Nothing to compete with (except perhaps the squirrels for the spring harvest of hazelnuts), no egoistic posturing for a job or a raise, no struggle with the Russians for oil of the Middle East, no desperate search for approval or acceptance from societal peers or acquaintances. Nature offers us a rare freedom from the painful and stressful concerns of society."

Mendoza: Brigandage is abnormal. Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good for it.

The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate Planning."

Japhy and I were kind of outlandish-looking on the campus in our old clothes in fact Japhy was considered an eccentric around the campus, which is the usual thiing for campuses and college people to think whenever a real man appears on the scene -- colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstacy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.

Lloyd Dobler [John Cusack]: I don't want to sell anything, buy anything or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or... process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought or processed, you know, as a career I don't want to do that.

Don Birnam: Sure, take a nice job, public accountant, real estate salesman. I haven't the guts, Helen. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I can't take quiet desperation.

Renton [Ewan McGregor]: Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stuffing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself. Choose a future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?

Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt): You are not your job. You are not the money in your bank account. You are not the car you drive. You are not how much money is in your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.