There are some masterpieces of dialogue in one of my favorite movie franchise. Here are some I have noted and interpreted:
Don't just settle for the status quo:
Many adventures of Cp. Jack Sparrow made me wonder: why does this man never settle? He achieves what he desires, only to set his sail, quite literally, for another adventure. I think I found my answer:
While running away after robbing a bank, with the bank itself (Yes! the building itself!) Cp. Jack Sparrow asks a girl he finds running beside him, "Are you a part of the plan?" She responds, "I am not looking for trouble!"
While still running, to no one in particular, Cp. Jack Sparrow says, "What a horrible way to live!"
What trouble are you looking for these days?
Take time to look into your compass, however useless you think it is:
As Cp. Jack Sparrow makes his first appearance; he is welcomed by being insulted. "The worst pirate I've heard of!" Wit being his greatest weapon, he attacks by saying, "But you HAVE heard of me!"
To validate his insults, the commodore remarks that even the compass Cp. Jack Sparrow carries is useless, "A compass that does not point north."
Later in the movie, we learn rather subtly that the compass does not point north because the bearer of the compass is not looking for north. It points to what you most desire.
With that premise, I suggest a simple thought experiment. Imagine you had a compass that tells you what you want the most. Where would it point to right now? Are you headed in that direction?
Not everyone has to understand you:
"You're mad!"Someone says to Cp. Jack Sparrow. He replies, "Thank goodness for that, for if I weren't, this would never work."
It is okay to feel directionless at times:
Cp. Barbosa to the crew: "For certain, you must be lost to find a place that can't be found. Elseways, everyone would know where it was."
You can outwork luck sometimes:
When beautiful Miss Elizabeth is revealed of Cp. Jack Sparrow's success in escaping the stranded island was merely a lucky narrow escape; she is disappointed. "So that's it then? That's the secret of the grand adventure of the infamous Cp. Jack Sparrow."
But the captain has already answered this question many times before. One example: "It is bad luck to wake a sleeping man," says Mr. Gibbs, to which the captain replies, "I know how to turn it around!" Captain Jack Sparrow's superpower is that he makes luck work in his favor. "Makes" being the keyword.
There are awesome but useless advice:
Will Turner: This is either madness or brilliance.
Cp. Jack Sparrow: It is remarkable how often those traits coincide.
So true yet so useless. I have started to notice useless advice. They disguise themselves as very philosophical but are often just pretentious.
Instead, consider this: Cp. Jack Sparrow says, "The only rules that matter are what a man can and can't do!"
That isn't a very philosophically sophisticated dialogue; nevertheless, it is instrumental. If you only do what you can, one of two things is inevitable: You'd either succeed at whatever you were trying, or you would end up saying, "Well, I did what I could."
Most of us will happily take both of those scenarios.