- Roger: You can't sell a product without first making people feel bad.
- Nick: Why not?
- Roger: Because it's a substitution game. You have to remind them that they're missing something from their lives. Everyone's missing something, right?
- Nick: I guess.
- Roger: Trust me. And when they're feeling sufficiently incomplete, you convince them your product is the only thing that can fill the void. So instead of taking steps to deal with their lives, instead of working to root out the real reason for their misery, they go out and buy a stupid looking pair of cargo pants.
- Roger: I could tell you that what you think of as your personality is nothing but a collection of Vanity Fair articles. I could tell you your choice of sexual partners this evening was decided months ago by some account executive at Young & Rubicam. I could tell you that given a week to study your father and the ways in which he ignores you I could come up with a schtick you'd be helpless to resist. Helpless.
- Roger: You drink that drink! Alcohol has been a social lubricant for thousands of years. What do you think, you're going to sit here tonight and reinvent the wheel?
- [Advice to some high school losers]
- Roger: In ten years, you won't even remember what this place looks like. Trust me.
- Roger: Do you think women have a clue what goes on up here? What do they think, it's all stock quotes, drill bit sizes? They don't know shit! Let's keep it that way.
- Roger: I gotta get home, look for work. As we speak, consumers everywhere need reminding of just how fat and unattractive they are.
- Roger: If you feel compelled to contribute to the pathetic, heartbreaking predictability of it all, by all means...
- Roger: Remember, angle of incidence equals angle of reflectives. In other words, if you can see them, they can see you. So be alert.
- Roger: Look at me, Nick, and answer me this question: Who's the greatest basketball player in the history of the game?
- Nick: Um. Well, do you mean ever?
- Roger: Oh, come on. This is easy!
- Nick: Michael Jordan?
- Roger: Michael Jordan. And why was he the greatest? Because he paced himself. Because he always had something left at the finish. Magic Johnson called it "winning time."
- Roger: Natural selection, now that is a principle of nature, selection, something has to lose, something has to be defeated in order for something else to be selected