Roger Ebert Quotes

You can't say it wasn't interesting.

Never marry someone who doesn’t love the movies you love. Sooner or later, that person will not love...

Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.

Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized ni...

I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea ...

We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while r...

On Hayao MiyazakiI told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movem...

Every great film should seem new every time you see it.

Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in...

If your religion doesn't respect the rights of other religions, it is lacking something.

My motto: 'No good movie is depressing. All bad movies are depressing.'

I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am gratefu...

To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of compariso...

A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man i...

We laugh, that we may not cry.

I like smart movies about smart people, and enjoy it when most of the facts are on the table and we ...

If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Ho...

By going to the movies, and because of other things, too, going to college, making a wide variety of...

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that ...

So much of what happens by chance forms what becomes your life.

The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that ...

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of d...

Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

Dear Bill (O'Reilly)...I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you...

To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must t...

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned ...

Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, mor...

Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natu...

It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.

It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help...

A corner is important. It provides privacy and an anchor and lets you exist independently of the roo...

I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are impor...

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all...

All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.

One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the...

No matter what they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out.

Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immedi...

How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," abou...

Aren't you getting tired of people hating one another? What do they think they get out of it?

Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself ...

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy'...

In thinking about 'depressing movies,' many people don't realize that all bad movies are depressing,...

The sad thing is that when movies like this fail, executives think that proves there's no audience f...

If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your ca...

One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, an...

Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Ra...

There's nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.