Broken Aesop/Quotes

"Homer: Save a guy's life, and what do you get? Nothing! Worse than nothing! Just a big, scary rock! Bart: Hey, don't knock the head, man. Marge: Homer, you don't do things like that to be rewarded! The moral of the story is that a good deed is its own reward! Bart: But we got a reward, the head is cool! Marge: Well, then maybe the moral is, no good deed goes unrewarded. Homer: Wait a minute! If I hadn't written that nasty letter we wouldn't have gotten anything. Marge: Mmmm... then I guess the moral is, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Lisa: Maybe there is no moral, Mom. Homer: Exactly! It's just a bunch of stuff that happened. Marge: But it certainly was a memorable few days. Homer: Amen to that. ]"

- ''The Simpsons"

""In the Barney episode about individuality, each child named something that they liked doing, on the grounds that liking something different from other people was why you were special. But then, Barney made them all do those things together. That's counterproductive -- it shows children that something gains its definition of good if everyone else likes doing it too, not if you like doing it.""

- Aimee Yermish, describing an overlap between this trope and Family-Unfriendly Aesop, in an essay comparing Barney and Friends to Sesame Street

""You can't have an anti-gun message, when you CLEARLY USED GUNS TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM! IT JUST DOESN'T WORK!""

- Linkara, Superman At Earths End

""Let's get to my biggest problem with the film - the message. Actually, the message (the past can hurt, but it is preferable to learn from it and confront one's fears), I really like, and I think it's a very adult message. [...] What I'm not behind is the fact that when he does face his fears, his fears start to win, and everything he was taught before is suddenly working against him. Nobody even gets behind him, nobody's even standing up for him. That is, until it turns out he didn't commit the crime that he thought he did. So I guess the moral of the story is "Never take responsibility for what you've done because nobody will be behind you unless it turns out you didn't really do it." Yeah, how is this confronting his past? It's a past that never happened, so it doesn't matter. And even when he thought it did happen, the movie didn't support him, almost as if the film was saying if he did accidentally kill his father, he deserves to die. Look, nobody's on his side until he comes out and says "Ha ha, wasn't me". And I'm sorry, but that's a serious flaw. [...] This film didn't teach me to come forward with my mistakes and take the responsibility for it. It taught me to convince people that I didn't do the mistake, because that way, I'll have a happy ending!""

- Doug Walker, The Lion King

""Way to make a point of letting go of childhood, movie!""

- The Nostalgia Chick, on Labyrinth's ending.

"Robin: "I think we've all learned a lesson about watching too much TV."

Starfire: "But it is because Beast Boy watched too much of the television that were able to defeat the Control Freak."

Raven: "So there isn't any big lesson to learn from this."

Cyborg: "That's right. It was all completely meaningless.""

- Teen Titans

"For this movie to be described as a moral statement about anything other than the filmmaker's prejudices is beyond belief."

- Roger Ebert, review of the 1995 movie Priest

"You're telling me that the best athletes, the most active leaders, and the most original students in your school are smoking marijuana? Most are not. Like many of you, they may have experimented - they may enjoy toking on Saturday nights at a party. But these people are rocking your teenage world because they are motivated, healthy, and hard-working kids the majority of the time. Like a brain surgeon who drinks a martini when he's not on call, the successful kids in your school may smoke pot on occasion, but they are not stoners."

- Bill O'Reilly, The O'Reilly Factor For Kids