Roger Ebert Quotes

It's clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.

I am a firm believer that if you can explain it to a kid, you're on the right track.

If somebody writes clearly, you can pretty much tell immediately if something is shallow or deep, whereas if they write with all this duckweed on the surface, you can't tell if the stream is one inch deep or a hundred fathoms.

One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it's very complex, it's very profound.

There is no form of prose more difficult to understand and more tedious to read than the average scientific paper.

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.

Complexity is the enemy of clarity

Any effort... to make the obscure obvious is likely to be unappealing, for the penalty of failure is confusion while the reward of success is banality.

Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.

I see woefully obscure poetry as simply a kind of verbal rudeness.

If something can't be explained on the back of an envelope, it's rubbish.

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

It's really a trade-off: you're always having to decide whether you're going to say the more ambitious thing, and lose a little clarity - or are you going to say something really clearly, and sacrifice a little nuance? Get too obscure, and you sound like a pretentious asshole; go overboard with the clarity, and you sound like you're talking down to your audience, or like you yourself are a reductive simpleton.

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.

I suppose if you simplify things, it's going to make it easier to understand.

There is a culture among academics to be obscure. If you're too clear, you can't be saying anything interesting. The issue isn't word length. The issue is a commitment to speaking in a way an audience can understand.

Truth resists simplicity.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.

Forget the complaints against complexity; instead, complain about confusion.

Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all.

You should make it hard on yourself to write so you’re easier to read.

Intelligence complicates. Wisdom simplifies.

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.