Quotes by Roger Ebert

About Roger Ebert:

Roger Joseph Ebert was an American film critic and historian, journalist, screenwriter and author. He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert was the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. As of 2010, his reviews were syndicated to more than 200 newspapers in the United States and abroad. Ebert also published more than 20 books and dozens of collections of reviews.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.

Roger Ebert

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

Roger Ebert

The children of Birmingham did not really die in the State of Alabama, however, because Alabama is a state of mind, and in the minds of the [white] men who rule Alabama, those children had never lived [...] their blood is on so many hands, that histo...

Roger Ebert

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

Roger Ebert

We laugh, that we may not cry.

Roger Ebert

I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." . . . Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel...

Roger Ebert

A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.

Roger Ebert

Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.

Roger Ebert

How quickly we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove people mad. We who can see the stars e...

Roger Ebert

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

Roger Ebert

Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares you to keep yourself entertained. It gives you a better chance of an interesting job.

Roger Ebert

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

Roger Ebert

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

Roger Ebert

The sad thing is that when movies like this fail, executives think that proves there's no audience for unusual, original pictures - because they think they've made one.

Roger Ebert

To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accep...

Roger Ebert

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

Roger Ebert

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

Roger Ebert

In thinking about 'depressing movies,' many people don't realize that all bad movies are depressing, and no good movies are.

Roger Ebert

Dear Bill (O'Reilly)...I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician? That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was ...

Roger Ebert

Sometimes two people will regard each other over a gulf too wide to ever be bridged, and know immediately what could have happened, and that it never will.

Roger Ebert

On Hayao Miyazaki I told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, ...

Roger Ebert

Author Bio

  • NameRoger Ebert
  • DescriptionAmerican film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter
  • AliasesRoger Joseph Ebert
  • BornJune 18, 1942
  • DiedApril 4, 2013
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Film Critic; Journalist; Reporter; Writer
  • AwardsPulitzer Prize For Criticism