Fight Club — a 1999 film about an unnamed protagonist who struggles with rampant consumerism, despair, conformity, and fear of losing masculinity — is often touted as one of the most controversial yet most influential films of the 20th century. Calling it a groundbreaking film, The Rolling Stone noted decades ago:
The film’s bold, bruising humor leaves marks on a wide range of hot-button issues: It’s about being young, male and powerless against the pacifying drug of consumerism. It’s about solitude, despair and bottled-up rage. It’s about how not to feel dead as Y2K approaches. It’s about daring to imagine the disenfranchised reducing the world to rubble and starting over.
Tyler Durden — the alter ego for Fight Club’s main character played by Brad Pitt — became an anarchic, anti-hero icon to millions of young American adults coping with the pre-millennial challenges. While Durden’s nuggets of wisdom on materialism, quasi-existentialism, fatalism, fate, and individualism were intended to help the unnamed protagonist bring Laissez Faire to its knees, the life lessons dished out by him are as relevant as ever.
Here are 15 Fight Club quotes, by Tyler Durden the life coach, which will truly inspire you to break free from the world of consumerism, capitalism, and the ‘modern’ society…
- The things you own end up owning you.
- It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to anything.
- If you died right now, how would you feel about your life?
- Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
- I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say… let’s evolve. Let the chips fall where they may.
- You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your fucking khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.
- You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake, you are the same decaying organic matter as everything else, we are all part of the same compost heap.
- We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear.
- Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of material possessions.
- Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives.
- This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.
- You wanna make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs.
- Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.
- Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?
- You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen. We don’t need him!
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I disagree w Tyler Durdens opinions about 90%.While it does appear he is a deep thinker for being only 15 yrs old. He errors in his views of the world sometimes in his 15 whatever list. The truth is GOD DOES EXIST , HE DOES CARE ABOUT US, HE LOVES US, WE DO NEED HIM, JESUS DIED SO WE.CAN GET TO HEAVEN DESPITE OUR SINS, GOD DOES NOT HATE US,WE R HIS CHILDREN, CREATED BY HIM IN HIS IMAGE AND LIKENESS, SATAN AND ALL HIS DEMONS HATE US AND WANTS TO DESTROY OUR BODIES AND OUR SOULS IN HELL,
THIS WRETCHED EARTH WHILE BEING TORMENTED AND SUFFERING BY SATAN FOR EVE EATING FORBIDDEN FRUIT WHICH GOD TOLD HER AND ADAM NOT TO EAT FROM, BUT BECAUSE THEY DISOBEYED THATS WHY WE HAVE TO WORK AND STRUGGLE AS A PUNISHMENT FOR IT, BUT HE DEVISED A PLAN SO WE CAN BE SAVED FROM ETERNAL DAMNATION IN HELL, WHICH JESUS SPOKE OF NUMEROUS X
Shh now. Learn to write, learn to think. Then try again.
Also, anyone else find it ironic (yes, ironic) that this listicle about breaking free from consumerism is studded with ads for absolute shite?
Tyler’s (Chuck’s) real point is not about rejecting materialism so much as refusing to consider that we as a society are doing it all wrong. That I as an individual could be totally misguided about everything I’ve ever done in my life. That every assumption I’ve made could be a mistake.
You are a delusional idiot. This world will not improve, nor will society in general, until all religion is dead. You do not need an imaginary friend to explain life or be moral. Grow up. Wake up.
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