Guess quote

Roger Ebert [1942-2013] American

Rank: 101
Critic, Film critic

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.

Movies, Great, Intelligence, Peace, Time, Alone, Amazing, Car, Experience, Freedom, Health, Music, Power, Religion, Society, Teen, Women

Quote	Tags	Rank
Parents and schools should place great emphasis on the idea that it is all right to be different. Racism and all the other 'isms' grow from primitive tribalism, the instinctive hostility against those of another tribe, race, religion, nationality, class or whatever. You are a lucky child if your parents taught you to accept diversity.	Great, Religion	101
Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you.	Intelligence	102
Lebanon was at one time known as a nation that rose above sectarian hatred; Beirut was known as the Paris of the Middle East. All of that was blown apart by senseless religious wars, financed and exploited in part by those who sought power and wealth. If women had been in charge, would they have been more sensible? It's a theory.	Power, Time, Women	103
We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too.	Movies, Society	104
Every great film should seem new every time you see it.	Great, Movies, Time	105
And I think both the left and the right should celebrate people who have different opinions, and disagree with them, and argue with them, and differ with them, but don't just try to shut them up.		106
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.	Music	107
There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.		108
To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn't always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.	Health	109
I think that probably the - I don't give quotes to studios. They have to get those out of the paper or from television. So they wouldn't have had my quote opening day.		110
Nothing ever seems straightforward in Venice, least of all its romances.		111
Here's how much I know about hockey. Mike Royko and I were in a tiny bar one winter night, and the radio kept reporting goals by the Blackhawks. I mentioned how frequently the team was scoring. 'You're listening to the highlights,' Royko observed.		112
Reese Witherspoon is as cute as a button on Raggedy Ann's overalls, but irresistible raw sex appeal is not one of her qualities.		113
Clouds do not really look like camels or sailing ships or castles in the sky. They are simply a natural process at work. So too, perhaps, are our lives.		114
' The Lucky One' is at its heart a romance novel, elevated however by Nicholas Sparks' persuasive storytelling. Readers don't read his books because they're true, but because they ought to be true.		115
But considering that I walked in expecting no complexity at all, let alone the visual wonderments, 'Snow White and the Huntsman' is a considerable experience.	Alone, Experience	116
Here's a notion: Peace in the Middle East would come about more easily if the region were governed by women.	Peace	117
It does seem true that a lot of people will do anything, however humiliating, for fame.		118
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.		119
Nobody looks perfect. We have to find peace with the way we look and get on with life.	Peace	120
There's something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow.		121
Catholic theology believes that God gave man free will, and you can't give somebody free will and then send in a play from the sidelines.		122
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.	Freedom	123
No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.		124
We can't help identifying with the protagonist. It's coded in our movie-going DNA.		125
When we're discussing who to invite to a dinner party, my wife Chaz and I sometimes use the shorthand, 'good value for money,' which indicates guests expected to be entertaining.		126
Life is made up of challenges that cannot be solved but only accepted.		201
One difference between film noir and more straightforward crime pictures is that noir is more open to human flaws and likes to embed them in twisty plot lines.		202
Horror fans are a particular breed. They analyze films with such detail and expertise that I am reminded of the Canadian literary critic Northrup Frye, who approached literature with similar archetypal analysis.		203
Blockbusters run the mainstream industry. We may never again have a decade like the 1970s, when directors were able to find such freedom.		204
My motto: 'No good movie is depressing. All bad movies are depressing.'	Movies	205
I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason.		206
I'll tell you, I think that the Internet has provided an enormous boost to film criticism by giving people an opportunity to self publish or to find sites that are friendly.		207
The right really dominates radio, and it's amazing how much energy the right spends telling us that the press is slanted to the left when it really isn't. They want to shut other people up. They really don't understand the First Amendment.	Amazing	208
Time is what the depressed and panicked lack.		209
We think of first love as sweet and valuable, a blessed if hazardous condition.		210
Many really good films allow us to empathize with other lives.		211
Teaching prejudice to a child is itself a form of bullying. You've got to be taught to hate.		212
That's what fantasies are for, to help us imagine that things are better than they are.		213
It is reckless to make broad generalizations about any group of people.		214
I believe that young people wearing hoods, unless they are very young, can be frightening. What are they hiding? Why don't they want to come out into the light with the rest of us? They may be perfectly nice, but the hoods send an uncertain statement.		215
To die is one thing. How much worse to know that all the life that ever existed on this planet, and all it ever achieved, was to be obliterated?		216
Most of us do not consciously look at movies.	Movies	217
A lot of people just go to movies that feed into their preexisting and not so noble needs and desires: They just go to action pictures, and things like that.		218
By going to the movies, and because of other things, too, going to college, making a wide variety of friends, moving around traveling, I became a lot more open-minded than the heritage I was born into might have suggested.		219
I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people.		220
If a movie is really working, you forget for two hours your Social Security number and where your car is parked. You are having a vicarious experience. You are identifying, in one way or another, with the people on the screen.	Car	221
Why do alcoholics begin down the same hazardous road day after day? They are in search of that elusive window of well-being that opens when you drink your way out of a hangover and aren't yet drunk all over again. The alcoholic's day consists of trying to keep that window open.		222
From a dramatic viewpoint, there are few professions that grant their members entry into other lives, high among them cops, doctors, clergymen, journalists and prostitutes. Perhaps that explains why they figure in so much television and cinema. Their lives are lived in the midst of human drama.		223
A few actresses have all but set up shop as women of a certain age who attract younger lovers. I think of Susan Sarandon, Cameron Diaz and Isabelle Huppert.		224
It is quite possible for the vulgar to be funny, but to succeed, it must rise to a certain genius.		225
I've never found kicks to the groin particularly funny, although recent work in the genre of the buddy movie suggests audience research must prove me wrong.		226
I like smart movies about smart people, and enjoy it when most of the facts are on the table and we can contemplate them together.		301
'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' is without a doubt the best film we are ever likely to see on the subject - unless there is a sequel, which is unlikely, because at the end, the Lincolns are on their way to the theater.		302
Are vampires kinky? I didn't know.		303
If your religion doesn't respect the rights of other religions, it is lacking something.		304
Dogs notice, they share, they draw conclusions, they like it when they're able to be of service and are touchingly grateful when they're praised.		305
We exist to have our wealth moved up the economic chain out of our reach.		306
One of the weapons Marvel used in its climb to comic-book dominance was a willingness to invent new characters at a dizzying speed. There are so many Marvel universes, indeed, that some superheroes do not even exist in one another's worlds, preventing gridlock.		307
The idea that a book can advise a woman how to capture a man is touchingly naive. Books advising men how to capture a woman are far less common, perhaps because few men are willing to admit to such a difficulty. For both sexes, I recommend a good novel, offering scenarios you might learn from, if only because they reflect a lot of doubt.		308
Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems.		309
Why are some people bullied? Because they are different. How? It doesn't matter.		310
Growing up, I missed the whole 'Three Stooges' thing. Either they weren't on the station in my hometown, or we hadn't bought a TV set yet, or they came to town too late for me. I'm pretty sure that at the right age, I would have loved them.		311
If you find an occupation you love and spend your entire life working at it, is that enough?		312
I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grateful for is the gift of intelligence, and for life, love, wonder, and laughter. You can't say it wasn't interesting. My lifetime's memories are what I have brought home from the trip.	Intelligence	313
I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do.		314
In my reviews, I feel it's good to make it clear that I'm not proposing objective truth, but subjective reactions; a review should reflect the immediate experience.		315
Sarah Palin lacked the preparation or temperament to be one heartbeat away from the presidency, but what she possessed in abundance was the ability to inflame political passions and energize the John McCain campaign with star quality.		316
No movie has ever been able to provide a catharsis for the Holocaust, and I suspect none will ever be able to provide one for 9/11. Such subjects overwhelm art.		317
It's easier to identify with loss than love, because we have had so much more experience of it.		318
Because I don't give the studios advanced quotes or an advanced look at my reviews. I think the readers deserve to read my reviews before the studios do.		319
I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class.		320
I'm kind of glad the web is sort of totally anarchic. That's fine with me.		321
We don't have a lot of class-conscious filmmaking.		322
Well, you know what, I'm 60 years old, and I've been interested in politics since I was on my daddy's knee. During the 1948 election, we were praying for Truman. I know a lot about politics.		323
You can have a movie with hardly any cuts, or very few cuts, that is fascinating, you can't take your eyes away from it... Look at some of the long takes in Citizen Kane.		324
The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His.		325
The buried code of many American films has become: If I kill you, I have won and you have lost. The instinctive ethical code of traditional Hollywood, the code by which characters like James Stewart, John Wayne and Henry Fonda lived, has been lost.		326
A film is a terrible thing to waste.		401
Sometimes it's all about the casting.		402
In the world of acting, many are thin but few are talented.		403
It's the same the world over. A Hollywood production comes to town, and the locals all turn movie crazy.		404
In Hollywood, 'under development' means 'all I have is the title.'		405
I remember when a Coke came in a six-ounce bottle, and delicious it was. Now it comes in sizes so big that I question how the human bladder can deal with the intake.		406
Open-heart surgery is now part of a typical life experience for many people. Folks talk casually about 'having a stent put in,' as if they had their tires rotated.		407
On this ancient and miraculous world, where such beautiful natural and living things have evolved, something has gone wrong when life itself is used as a manufacturing process.		408
It is hard enough to be good at all, but to be good in comedy speaks for your character.		409
There's nothing like impending death to rouse you from existential boredom.		410
Ridley Scott's 'Prometheus' is a magnificent science-fiction film, all the more intriguing because it raises questions about the origin of human life and doesn't have the answers.		411
'Grand Illusion' and 'Rules of the Game' are routinely included on lists of the greatest films, and deserve to be.		412
One sign of a great actor is when he can be alone by himself on the screen, doing almost nothing, and producing one of a film's defining moments.		413
Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical.		414
What happens in a fantasy can be more involving than what happens in life, and thank goodness for that.		415
Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.		416
Why has Scandinavia been producing such good thrillers? Maybe because their filmmakers can't afford millions for CGI and must rely on cheaper elements like, you know, stories and characters.		417
All but a very few of us are in debt. We exist as entities who borrow money and spend the rest of our lives making interest payments on a debt tally that never seems to budge. Whatever wealth we have, in labor, property or cash, is suctioned to the top.		418
What a terrible thing it would be to be the Pope! What unthinkable responsibilities to fall on your shoulders at an advanced age! No privacy. No seclusion. No sin.		419
Anyone who reads advice books about romance has one problem to begin with: bad taste in literature.		420
I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me.		421
It often strikes me that the actors in high school movies look too old.		422
There must be a better reason to have a baby than to provide a plot point in a rom-com. Don't you think?		423
I'm told we movie critics praise movies that are long and boring.		424
Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy.		425
If there's anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it's an incompetent stupid action comedy. It's not so bad it's good. It's so bad it's nothing else but bad.		426
Not everyone needs to be slammed into a category and locked there.		501
All over the web there are some very good critics and it's become for people who are interested. It's become a very good way to get to reviews and involve yourself in discussions.		502
But the fact is, most people are not going to be rich someday.		503
Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.		504
I don't think Bush was legitimately elected President.		505
If a movie isn't a hit right out of the gate, they drop it. Which means that the whole mainstream Hollywood product has been skewed toward violence and vulgar teen comedy.	Teen	506
If Hollywood stars speak out, so do all sorts of other people. Now Hollywood stars can get a better hearing.		507
It's a good question, because a movie isn't good or bad based on its politics. It's usually good or bad for other reasons, though you might agree or disagree with its politics.		508
It's funny that there was so much disturbance about having a Catholic in the White House with Kennedy, and when we finally get a religion in the White House that's causing a lot of conflicts, and concerns, and disturbances for a lot of people, it's in the Bush Administration.		509
Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.		510
The Academy is paranoid about its image.		511
The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.		512
I am utterly bored by celebrity interviews. Most celebrities are devoid of interest.		513
We are the playthings of the gods.		514
Who was the real Hitchcock? I interviewed him once and haven't a clue.		515
It's rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, 'To hell with the consequences.'		516
I don't require movies to be about good people, and I don't reject screen violence.		517
If you can act as if something is true, in a sense that makes it true.		518
Sometimes miraculous films come into being, made by people you've never heard of, starring unknown faces, blindsiding you with creative genius.		519
It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.		520
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.		521
It's not often a thriller keeps me wound up as well as 'Headhunters' did. I knew I was being manipulated and didn't care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done.		522
James Cameron's films have always been distinguished by ground-breaking technical excellence.		523
I do suspect my star ratings average too high. But, of course, star ratings are ridiculous. I'm stuck with them.		524
It is not enough for a movie to be righteous. It must also be watchable.		525
People never think of themselves as choosing to be politically correct. They simply think in the way that they do.		526

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