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

Roger Ebert

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Roger Ebert
Age: 70 †
Born: 1942
Born: June 18
Died: 2013
Died: April 4
Film Critic
Journalist
Presenter
Reporter
Screenwriter
Writer
Urbana
Illinois
Roger Joseph Ebert
Powerful
Art
Better
Make
Empathy
Good
Arts
People
Aids
Ones
Movies

More quotes by Roger Ebert

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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
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Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson star. I neglected to mention that, maybe because I was trying to place them in this review's version of the Witness Protection Program. If I were taken off the movie beat and assigned to cover the interior design of bowling alleys, I would have some idea of how they must have felt as they made this film.
Roger Ebert
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It's rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, 'To hell with the consequences.'
Roger Ebert
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If you pay attention to the movies they will tell you what people desire and fear. Movies are hardly ever about what they seem to be about. Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may be.
Roger Ebert
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We laugh, that we may not cry.
Roger Ebert
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The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.
Roger Ebert
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Many thrillers follow such reliable formulas that you can look at what's happening and guess how much longer a film has to run.
Roger Ebert
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I do suspect my star ratings average too high. But, of course, star ratings are ridiculous. I'm stuck with them.
Roger Ebert
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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.
Roger Ebert
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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
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Valentines Day is being marketed as a Date Movie. I think its more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.
Roger Ebert
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I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.
Roger Ebert
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Crowds can be frightening. They have a way of impressing the low, base taste upon their members. Watching the way thousands of people in his audience could not think for themselves, could not find the courage to allow their ordinary feelings of decency and taste to prevail, I understood better how demagogues are possible.
Roger Ebert
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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.
Roger Ebert
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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.
Roger Ebert
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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
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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
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People send me e-mails saying, You're a movie critic. You don't know anything about politics. 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
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If you plan to miss this movie, better miss it quickly I doubt if it'll be around to miss for long.
Roger Ebert
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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.
Roger Ebert