Roger Ebert – 18 Quotes

18 Quotes by Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

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

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.

– Roger Ebert

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

– Roger Ebert

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

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.

– Roger Ebert

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

– Roger Ebert

Most of us do not consciously look at movies.

– Roger Ebert

Movies absorb our attention more completely, I think.

– Roger Ebert

The movies that are made more thoughtfully or made or with more ambition often get just get drowned out by the noise.

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert

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.

– Roger Ebert