Roger Ebert Quotes

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

Life is made up of challenges that cannot be solved but only accepted.

Anyone who reads advice books about romance has one problem to begin with: bad taste in literature.

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

Praise without merit is more harmful than unearned criticism.

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

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

Start. Don’t look back. If at the end it doesn’t meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes.

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

I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people.

Dogs remember every favor you ever do for them and store those events in a memory bank titled Why My Human Is A God.

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.

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.

What you see is so much less than what you get.

No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.

Of what use is freedom of speech to those who fear to offend?

Of all the arts, movies are the most powerful aid to empathy, and good ones make us into better people.

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.

I believe that if, at the end, 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.

Sometimes you only need to have a few words with a person to know you would like to have many more.

I begin to feel like I was in the last generation of Americans who took a civics class.

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.

I was indeed a snob, if you agree with this definition: 'A person who believes that their tastes in a particular area are superior to those of other people.' I do believe that. Not superior to all other people, but to some, most probably including those who think Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen is a great film. That is not simply ego on my part. It is a faith that after writing and teaching about films for more than 40 years, my tastes are more evolved than those of a fanboy.

To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.

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.