The following article have spoilers for the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.
Summary
- The darkly comic quotes in The Wolf of Wall Street reveal a satirical take on greed and self-destruction.
- Jordan Belfort's addiction to money, drugs, and power leads to a lifestyle of excess and eventual downfall.
- The film's portrayal of Wall Street culture highlights the dangers of greed and unethical behavior in pursuit of wealth.
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street quotes help reveal the darkly comic crime epic that tells the true story of stockbroker Jordan Belfort’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) rise to power and fall from grace. While the movie opened to positive reviews, it was criticized by some viewers who felt it glamorized Belfort’s white-collar criminal lifestyle. The film’s sense of humor and accurate depiction of Wall Street antics do make that lifestyle look fun, but it all becomes too much. That’s the message – a life of excess, as the name would suggest, is too much to handle.
The best Wolf of Wall Street quotes do not glamorize but rather satirize a lifestyle of greed. The real Jordan Belfort is ultimately a fool within his own story, destroying his own life out of little more than self-hatred. The film also perfectly satirizes the culture that enables Jordan's self-destructive lifestyle, with him endangering the lives of those around him in his relentless pursuit of getting everything that he wants and more. As dark as that premise is, the dialogue in the film still finds ways to make the audience laugh while also making them think.
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21 "But Of All The Drugs Under God's Blue Heaven, Here Is One That Is My Absolute Favorite."
Jordan Belfort
even with the heavy drug use, it is money that he will ultimately give up everything for
While there are other Martin Scorsese movies with more violence, The Wolf of Wall Street likely has more drug use than any film in the director's career. Jordan lives a life of excess, doing all the drugs he can daily. It is wild to hear him describe his drug regimen but Jordan admits the one thing that he is addicted to more than anything else is money.
It is a funny yet thought-provoking idea that, even with all the heavy drug use, it is money that he will ultimately give up everything for. That also came back to haunt him as he, like so many others, got so involved in heavy drug use that it destroyed them, often leading to their deaths. For Belfort, he did a lot of drugs, but that was not what he was really addicted to. At the same time, his addiction to money was what led to his eventual downfall, making it just as dangerous as any illegal drug.
20 "Fun Coupons!"
Jordan Belfort
One of the most interesting things about seeing Jordan's gradual downfall is that he was warned about it constantly and did nothing to prevent it. He knew the FBI was looking into him and that his entire operation was in jeopardy of being torn down. But instead of addressing these issues, Jordan maintains his juvenile behaviors by not taking anything seriously.
When first meeting with FBI agents, Jordan mocks them with his extravagant wealth and showers them in cash, calling them "fun coupons." Belfort only cares about money because it gives him power. The more money he has, the more powerful he feels, because it changes how people treat him. When he calls his money "fun coupons," it is his way of making light of the fact that money is what buys him happiness, and he feels that as long as he has money -- and the power that comes with it -- the fun will never stop.
19 "The Only Thing Standing Between You And Your Goal Is The Bulls**t Story You Keep Telling Yourself As To Why You Can't Achieve It."
Jordan Belfort
There is a lot of talk about whether the movie is going too easy on Jordan Belfort. This seems to miss the point that the movie is being told from his perspective and even in his warped view of his actions, he cannot fully hide that he's the villain. This quote sums it up nicely as Jordan sees himself as the poster child for self-made success and praises that he had the determination few others did.
However, he doesn't see that his "never give up" attitude came down to not caring about the damage he caused. There are many movies where the narrator of the story is completely unreliable. Fight Club is a perfect example, and nothing the narrator says in that movie is really true. Even the life lessons that he claims he lives by are often skewered by his dark half. Fight Club is open about that fact, while The Wolf of Wall Street is more nuanced, and that is where people don't understand that Jordan is oblivious to his own dark half.
18 "The Real Question Is This: Was All This Legal? Absolutely F**king Not."
Jordan Belfort
Jordan is a criminal and does a lot of bad things
The real-life fraud case in The Wolf of Wall Street is a complex situation and the movie knows how much information is necessary to enjoy the movie. Through his fourth-wall-breaking narration to the audience, Jordan begins to explain their operations but quickly gives up and acknowledges that the average viewer will not be following along with this. Instead, he decides to cut to the core of the situation and address the most obvious question: none of it was legal.
While Jordan Belfort is an unreliable narrator, this is the one place where he is actually honest with the viewer -- as well as himself. Jordan is a criminal and does a lot of bad things. However, even after he admits that everything he did to make all this money and make all these people rich, he still won't accept that it was wrong. He feels righteous in breaking the law and getting rich because he just wants the power that comes with wealth. This Wolf of Wall Street quote shows he knows it is illegal -- he just doesn't care.
17 "So I Was Selling Them S***, But The Way I Looked At It, The Money Was Better Off In My Pocket."
Jordan Belfort
This Wolf of Wall Street quote is another example of how Jordan's delusions about the kind of person he is only going so far. He doesn't see himself as a crook but rather someone who is working the system like a genius. He has no respect for the people he is selling to yet still maintains some vague insistence that he is helping them. As he explains himself, he arrives at the inevitable conclusion that he is scamming them into buying worthless stocks, but forgives himself because he wants the money more than they do.
Jordan is a bad person and the people who think the movie glamorizes him miss the point that quotes like this make. Jordan is hurting a lot of people, and he doesn't care. He is ripping people off and taking their money, and he explains it away. He only cares about one person, and that is Jordan Belfort. Quotes like this show that he deserves every bit of punishment he receives at the end of the movie.
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16 "Nobody Knows If A Stock's Going Up, Down Or F***ing Sideways, Least Of All Stockbrokers. But We Have To Pretend We Know."
Mark Hanna
Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey) takes Jordan under his wing and is determined to teach him all about the stockbroker game, giving him tips and tricks about the job over lunch together. He tells Jordan that the stocks are unpredictable and no one knows exactly what's going to happen, but stockbrokers have to sell the confidence that they do know what will happen to their clients.
This is one of those Wolf of Wall Street quotes that cuts straight to the heart of the issues concerning greed culture, which is that it's realistically selling nothing. While Jordan was in it for just the money, Mark knew that the entire scheme was a scam, and he was in it for the ride. He is the man who teaches Jordan everything that he knows and Wolf of Wall Street quotes like these are how he taught Jordan how to become a master white color criminal who can sell people on false promises.
15 “Risk Is What Keeps Us Young.”
Aunt Emma
Aunt Emma (Joanna Lumley) and Jordan meet at his wedding to Naomi (Margot Robbie) and the two become fast friends and Emma says this line to him. It's an ironic Wolf of Wall Street quote because Jordan is essentially obsessed with making risky decisions, and it only serves to destroy his mind and body. Aunt Emma also dies not long after saying this, so it's another example of Wolf of Wall Street dialogue which sounds like sage wisdom at first, but completely falls apart under any scrutiny.
The lifestyle that Jordan is living is an addictive one. It is unclear what Aunt Emma is doing, but she keeps taking risks and soon dies, showing that risks only keep a person young as long as they can stay alive to make them. For Jordan, it was just as bad. He took risks that made him feel young, but once the law brought him down for his criminal activities, being young didn't mean as much when he had to spend much of those years locked in a cell, losing all the power he developed.
14 “You Can Watch Me, Mock Me, Try To Block Me But You Cannot Stop Me.”
Jordan Belfort
Once Jordan Belfort gets comfortable in his new job, he quickly rises up the hierarchy to the top position and everyone he works with aspires to be like him, but some people try to stop his business practices and criminal activity. Jordan has never-ending confidence in himself and becomes completely egotistical, thinking that he's unstoppable. Everyone could probably relate to wanting to be confident in themselves, but maybe not to the extent that Jordan is.
Still, his damning overconfidence makes for one catchy Wolf of Wall Street quote. Of course, this was another case of the unreliable narrator at work. He believes he is bulletproof and everything he does will pay off for him in the end. This leads him to become more arrogant and aloof, which of course, eventually leads to him making serious mistakes. By thinking he is untouchable, he soon believes it himself, and that is what leads to his downfall when he remembers he is very human in the end.