110+ Roger Ebert Quotes On Movies, Reviews And Analysis

Roger Ebert was an American film critic and screenwriter. He was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1975. He wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013, and was known for his thumbs-up and thumbs-down rating system for movies. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Roger Ebert on movies, reviews, analysis.

Top 10 Roger Ebert Quotes

1. What you see is so much less than what you get.
2. Every great film should seem new every time you see it.
3. I lost faith in the Oscars the first year I was a movie critic - the year that Bonnie and Clyde didn't win.
4. I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.
5. Life always has an unhappy ending, but you can have a lot of fun along the way, and everything doesn't have to be dripping in deep significance.
6. Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.
7. What every human being should do is eat a vegetarian diet based on whole foods. Period. That's it. Animal protein is bad for you. Dairy is bad for you. Forget the ads: Milk and eggs are bad for you.
8. It's hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie.
9. All I know is, it is better to be the whale than the squid.
10. I do not fear death. 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 Short Quotes

• It is more erotic to wonder if you're about to be kissed than it is to be kissed.
• Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs.
• The Muse visits during the process of creation, not before.
• Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?
• The very fact of snow is such an amazement.
• Many really good films allow us to empathize with other lives.
• Film theory has nothing to do with film.
• There's nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.
• We must try to contribute joy to the world.
• Movies are like a machine that generates empathy.

Roger Ebert Quotes About Movies

"Dirty Love" wasn't written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn't rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent... I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is. — Roger Ebert

When I go to a great movie, I can live somebody else's life a little bit for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief. — Roger Ebert

There are often lists of the great living male movie stars. How often do you see the name of Nicolas Cage? He should always be up there. He's daring and fearless in his choice of roles, and unafraid to crawl out on a limb, saw it off and remain suspended in air. — Roger Ebert

Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies. — Roger Ebert

The movie cheerfully offends all civilized notions of taste, decorum, manners and hygiene... The movie is vulgar? Vulgarity is when we don't laugh. When we laugh, it's merely human nature. — Roger Ebert

As I swim through the summer tide of vulgarity, I find that's what I'm looking for: Movies that at least feel affection for their characters. Raunchy is OK. Cruel is not. — Roger Ebert

This sucks on so many levels." Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. — Roger Ebert

I'm told we movie critics praise movies that are long and boring. — Roger Ebert

Occasionally an unsuspecting innocent will stumble into a movie like this and send me an anguished postcard, asking how I could possibly give a favorable review to such trash. My stock response is Ebert's Law, which reads: A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it. — Roger Ebert

Gene [Siskel] often mentioned something François Truffaut once told him: the most beautiful sight in a movie theater is to walk down to the front, turn around, and look at the light from the screen reflected on the upturned faces of the members of the audience. — Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert Quotes About Reviews

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

There is a movie called “Fargo” playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see “Little Indian, Big City,” I will never let you read one of my reviews again. — Roger Ebert

Last year, I reviewed a nine-hour documentary about the lives of Mongolian yak herdsmen, and I would rather see it again than sit through The Frighteners. — Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert Famous Quotes And Sayings

How quickly do 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 men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen. — Roger Ebert

I have no fear of death. We all die. I consider my remaining days to be like money in the bank. When it is all gone, I will be repossessed. — Roger Ebert

If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that you never say no to an old gypsy woman with a blind eye and leprous fingernails. — Roger Ebert

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

Life's missed opportunities, at the end, may seem more poignant to us than those we embraced — because in our imagination they have a perfection that reality can never rival. — Roger Ebert

Going to see Godzilla at the Palais of the Cannes Film Festival is like attending a satanic ritual in St. Peter's Basilica. — Roger Ebert

I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason. And the parrots of talk radio are just sending out the same stuff. When I look at my e-mails, I see the same Limbaugh rhetoric; apparently, people don't have any ideas of their own. And there's just this drumroll of anti-progressive thought. — Roger Ebert

Rollerball is an incoherent mess, a jumble of footage in search of plot, meaning, rhythm and sense. There are bright colors and quick movement on the screen, which we can watch as a visual pattern that, in entertainment value, falls somewhere between a kaleidoscope and a lava lamp. — Roger Ebert

Because of the rush of human knowledge, because of the digital revolution, I have a voice, and I do not need to scream. — Roger Ebert

A young girl is possessed by a devil, and Constantine shouts, 'I need a mirror! Now! At least three feet high!' He can capture the demon in the mirror and throw it out the window, see, although you wonder why supernatural beings would have such low-tech security holes. — Roger Ebert

It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. — Roger Ebert

To say that George Lucas cannot write a love scene is an understatement; greeting cards have expressed more passion. — Roger Ebert

An actress should never, ever, be asked to run beside a van in red disco boots for more than about half a block, and then only if her child is being kidnapped. — Roger Ebert

While I am usually in despair when a movie abandons its plot for a third act given over entirely to action, I have no problem with the way Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ends, because it has been pointing toward this ending, hinting about it, preparing us for it, all the way through. What a glorious movie. — Roger Ebert

CROUCHING TIGER is nevertheless a gloriously big epic, starring the Hong Kong action stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh in a visionary adventure where the characters seem set free from the force of gravity. — Roger Ebert

We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. — Roger Ebert

Now I see that all relationships are virtual, even those that take place in person. Whether we use our bodies or a keyboard, it all comes down to two minds crying out from their solitude. — Roger Ebert

Films to the degree that they glorify mindlessness and short attention span they are bad, to the degree that they encourage empathy with people not like ourselves and encourage us to think about life, they are good. — Roger Ebert

Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius. — Roger Ebert

And yet, even so, there is a way to find happiness. That is to be curious about all of the interlocking events that add up to our lives. To notice connections. To be amused or perhaps frightened by the ways things work out. If the universe is indifferent, what a consolation that we are not. — Roger Ebert

Mad Dog Time is the first movie I have seen that does not improve on the sight of a blank screen viewed for the same length of time. Oh, I've seen bad movies before. But they usually made me care about how bad they were. Watching Mad Dog Time is like waiting for the bus in a city where you're not sure they have a bus line. — Roger Ebert

Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live. — Roger Ebert

I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am still awake at night, asking how? I am more content with the question than I would be with an answer. — Roger Ebert

An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it. — Roger Ebert

Film has become a marketed commodity, and the opportunities and audiences for art cinema have grown smaller. There is a general downturn in cultural literacy, perhaps because of television. — Roger Ebert

There are two things you can't argue in film: comedy and eroticism. If something doesn't make you laugh, no one can tell you why it's funny, and it's difficult to reason someone out of an erection. — Roger Ebert

When I had been a film critic for ten minutes, I treated Doris Day as a target for cheap shots. I have learned enough to say today that the woman was remarkably gifted. — Roger Ebert

What's sad about not eating is the experience, whether at a family reunion or at midnight by yourself in a greasy spoon under the L tracks. The loss of dining, not the loss of food. — Roger Ebert

Someone once said the fundamental reason we get married is because have a universal human need for a witness. — Roger Ebert

We are born into a box of time and space. We use words and communication to break out of it and to reach out to others. — Roger Ebert

Steven Spielberg makes Minority Report with the newest digital technology; other directors seem to be trying to make their movies from it. — Roger Ebert

[Marlon] Brando was the only guy who could step out of that shadow at the end of that movie and be worth the wait. — Roger Ebert

What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable. — Roger Ebert

A truly strong woman will choose a stong man who disagrees with her over a weak one who goes along. — Roger Ebert

The ability of so many people to live comfortably with the idea of capital punishment is perhaps a clue to how so many Europeans were able to live with the idea of the Holocaust: Once you accept the notion that the state has the right to kill someone and the right to define what is a capital crime, aren't you halfway there? — Roger Ebert

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class. I begin to feel like most Americans don't understand the First Amendment, don't understand the idea of freedom of speech, and don't understand that it's the responsibility of the citizen to speak out. — 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 history will weep in the telling...and it is not new blood. It is old, so very old. — Roger Ebert

A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it. — Roger Ebert

The layout was griping, the glide is awesome. Two ten-inch fins up, way up. — 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

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

Why is it that English, drama and music teachers are most often recalled as our mentors and inspirations? Maybe because artists are rarely members of the popular crowd. — Roger Ebert

When I go to the movies, one of my strongest desires is to be shown something new. I want to go to new places, meet new people, have new experiences. When I see Hollywood formulas mindlessly repeated, a little something dies inside of me: I have lost two hours to boors who insist on telling me stories I have heard before. — Roger Ebert

Much has been written about Generation X and the films about it. Clerks is so utterly authentic that its heroes have never heard of their generation. When they think of "X," it's on the way to the video store. — Roger Ebert

Pixar is the first studio that is a movie star. — Roger Ebert

There are few lonelier sights than a good comedian being funny in a movie that doesn't know what funny is. — Roger Ebert

If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination. — Roger Ebert

We live in a box of space and time. Movies are windows in its walls. They allow us to enter other minds, not simply in the sense of identifying with the characters, although that is an important part of it, but by seeing the world as another person sees it. — Roger Ebert

Jane Austen wrote six of the most beloved novels in the English language, we are informed at the end of Becoming Jane, and so she did. The key word is beloved. Her admirers do not analyze her books so much as they just plain love them to pieces. — Roger Ebert

I'd rather be called a N*gger than a Slave. — Roger Ebert

I was born inside the movie of my life. The visuals were before me, the audio surrounded me, the plot unfolded inevitably but not necessarily. I don't remember how I got into the movie, but it continues to entertain me. — Roger Ebert

You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy. — 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

Films like Fargo are why I love the movies. — Roger Ebert

Marlon Brando is the most influential movie actor of the century. — Roger Ebert

The purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize with other people... For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. — Roger Ebert

To call "A Lot like Love" dead in the water is an insult to water. — Roger Ebert

I have always had my doubts about any form of divine intervention in sports contests. The power of prayer may be remarkable in many other arenas, but why should God want my team to win instead of the other side? Isn't it insulting to request God to even take an interest in baseball? — Roger Ebert

In Blue Crush , we meet three Hawaiian surfers who work as hotel maids, live in a grotty rental, and are raising the kid sister of one of them. Despite this near-poverty, they look great; there is nothing like a tan and a bikini to overcome class distinctions. — 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." That is why 90% of academic film theory is bullshit. Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel. — Roger Ebert

Just write, get better, keep writing, keep getting better. It's the only thing you can control. — Roger Ebert

Troy is based on the epic poem The Iliad by Homer , according to the credits. Homer's estate should sue. — Roger Ebert

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights. — Roger Ebert

They're not trying to prevent Hollywood from making movies. They're asking that the most powerful image-building machinery in the world stop grinding out killer dykes and twisted homo sex fiends as if sexual orientation had anything to do with criminal behavior. — Roger Ebert

3-D is a waste of a perfectly good dimension. Hollywood's current crazy stampede toward it is suicidal. It adds nothing essential to the moviegoing experience. For some, it is an annoying distraction. For others, it creates nausea and headaches. — Roger Ebert

Never marry anyone you could not sit next to during a three-day bus trip. — Roger Ebert

When I am writing my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was. All is well. I am as I should be. — Roger Ebert

Show me a sexual practice that involves ice cubes and hot sauce, and I will show you a sexual practice that would be improved without them. — Roger Ebert

No movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmet Walsh in a supporting role can be altogether bad. — Roger Ebert

Going to a movie so you won't be offended is like eating potato chips made with Olestra; you avoid the dangers of the real thing, but your insides fill up with synthetic runny stuff. — Roger Ebert

The moment a man stops dreaming is the moment he petrifies inside. — Roger Ebert

Battlefield Earth is like taking a bus trip with someone who has needed a bath for a long time. It's not merely bad; it's unpleasant in a hostile way. — Roger Ebert

There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between. — Roger Ebert

Exhilarating. Radical Grace moved me to tears with its portrayal of good people putting their beliefs into action in ways that transcend all ideological boundaries. — 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

Teenagers used to go to the movies to see adults having sex. Today adults go to the movies to see teenagers having sex. — Roger Ebert

A remarkable documentary that's also one of the most beautiful nature films I've seen. — Roger Ebert

Oh, here comes Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and Jimmy Smits! — Roger Ebert

Life Lessons by Roger Ebert

1. Roger Ebert taught us to always be open to new experiences, to never stop learning, and to always be willing to challenge our own preconceptions.
2. He also showed us that it is important to be honest and authentic in our opinions, and to never be afraid to speak our truth.
3. Finally, he demonstrated that it is possible to be both passionate and critical in our approach to life, and to always strive to find the beauty in the world around us.