Boiler Room is about a penny stock sales company that is involved with shady dealings and pump and dump schemes. There’s a lot of good sales quotes through-out the movie, here are just a few of the ones I liked enough to write down.
Ben Affleck as Jim Young, one of the senior brokers and head of HR at J.T. Marlin.
Jim Young: And there is no such thing as a no sale call. A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is who is gonna close? You or him? Now be relentless, that’s it, I’m done.
Jim Young: There’s an important phrase that we use here, and think it’s time that you all learned it. Act as if. You understand what that means? Act as if you are the fucking President of this firm. Act as if you got a 9″ cock. Okay? Act as if.
Jim Young: They say money can’t buy happiness? Look at the fucking smile on my face. Ear to ear, baby.
Jim Young: Anybody who tells you money is the root of all evil doesn’t fucking have any.
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Giovanni Ribisi as Seth Davis, a 19-year-old college dropout who starts at J.T. Marlin and is the main protagonist of the film..
Seth Davis: What do you mean, you’re gonna pass. Alan, the only people making money passing are NFL quarterbacks and I don’t see a number on your back.
Seth Davis: I read this article a while back, that said that Microsoft employs more millionaire secretary’s that any other company in the world. They took stock options over Christmas bonuses. It was a good move. I remember there was this picture, of one of the groundskeepers next to his Ferrari. Blew my mind. you see shit like that, and it just plants seeds, makes you think its possible, even easy. And then you turn on the TV, and there’s just more of it. The $87 Million lottery winner, that kid actor that just made 20 million off his last movie, that internet stock that shot through the roof, you could have made millions if you had just gotten in early, and that’s exactly what I wanted to do: get in. I didn’t want to be an innovator any more, i just wanted to make the quick and easy buck, i just wanted in. The Notorious BIG said it best: “Either you’re slingin’ crack-rock, or you’ve got a wicked jump-shot.” Nobody wants to work for it anymore. There’s no honor in taking that after school job at Mickey Dee’s, honor’s in the dollar, kid. So I went the white boy way of slinging crack-rock: I became a stock broker.
Greg Weinstein (senior broker at the firm & also Seth’s boss): Hang up. Hang up the phone.
Seth Davis: Thank you. That’s nice for you to do that for me.
Greg Weinstein: First of all, there’s gonna be a lot of these regardless of how good you are but you happen to suck big fat ass rhinoceros dick.
Seth Davis: Well, thank you. That’s confidence inspiring.