Roger Ebert Quotes

I think, when I meet a person, in general, it's not my habit to conclude anything about people. Not completely. Even people you know well constantly remain open.

I don't like to say, "Oh, I don't like this kind of music." I like to listen to it and try to see what people who like it get out of it.

I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.

I try my best to learn from other people's mistakes. I have a lot of respect for people who can change.

The ability to understand people is a choice.

Your understanding of another person is limited by what you think you already know. So when you just listen, the person you meet won't match your preconception. The exciting thing is that you usually meet someone much wiser and kinder than you expected. You might also lose track of your ideas about who you are.

The ideas of directing attention outward, trying to imagine other people complexly, trying not to see myself as the center of the universe - these concepts have become important to me, and I hope they're at work in my life on a minute-by-minute basis.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged.

I've concluded that the metric by which God will assess my life isn't dollars, but the individual people whose lives I've touched. I think that's the way it will work for us all. Don't worry about the level of individual prominence you have achieved; worry about the individuals you have helped become better people.

People want to give advice but can't take it themselves.

I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.

I did not think I had what it took to be an actor, because most of the actors that I encountered were people who were very narcissistic and I thought since I lacked narcissism to become an actor because that's what it took. It was more of a social experiment for me to walk in the shoes of other people that I found interesting.

Instead of talking in the hope that people will listen, try listening in the hope that people will talk.

Success is all about being able to extend love to people. The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to other people, how they approach the future, people who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it.

The difference between listening and pretending to listen, I discovered, is enormous. One is fluid, the other is rigid. One is alive, the other is stuffed. Eventually, I found a radical way of thinking about listening. Real listening is a willingness to let the other person change you. When I’m willing to let them change me, something happens between us that’s more interesting than a pair of dueling monologues.

You've got to give people a fair chance of saying what they believe, and then you've got to decide, "Do you believe 'em?"

I do think it's important not to be absolutely sure, so sure that you can't reinvent yourself in some way, or at least rediscover the truth of why you think what you think, and not just take it as an assumption.

A person unlearns arrogance when he knows he is always among worthy human beings; being alone fosters presumption. Young people are arrogant because they always associate with their own peers, those who are all really nothing but who would like to be very important.

I think it just came with me evolving as a person and me understanding that it's not right to judge or to say anything derogatory about other people, especially if I don't know them.

Be careful how you judge people, most of all friends. You don't sum up a man's life in one moment.

Take time to get to know people. Understand where they are coming from, what is important to them. Make sure they are with you.

Don't ever get so big or important that you can not hear and listen to every other person.

When people realize they are being listened to, they tell you things.

Over the last thirty years or so, I have definitely become more enlightened about corners of the social spectrum that I had less exposure to as a young man. I've interacted with more poor people, more minorities and more sexual minorities. As you get more people from different backgrounds involved in your life, you get a broader perspective and you're less cavalier about your opinions.

Real dialogue is where two or more people become willing to suspend their certainty in each other's presence.