Wealth & Money Quote by Roger Ebert

The sting in Ebert's line is its refusal to participate in America's favorite bedtime story: that everyone is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Coming from a critic, it reads like a review of a national genre - the bootstrap fantasy - with the verdict delivered in plain, unsparing prose. No metaphors, no inspirational loopholes. Just a blunt correction to a cultural script that keeps people compliant by keeping them hopeful.

The specific intent is less to shame ambition than to puncture the moral glamour we attach to wealth. If most people will never be rich, then policies and social attitudes built around eventual personal ascent start to look like a con: tolerating inequality now because you might cash in later. Ebert's subtext is about solidarity. When you stop imagining yourself as future rich, you can start seeing yourself as present human - a worker, a renter, a patient, a parent - someone whose interests align with other ordinary people rather than with an aspirational identity.

Context matters because Ebert wasn't a politician; he was a professional evaluator of stories. That sensibility is all over the line. He understands how narratives shape behavior, how a myth can be commercially useful, and how hard it is to critique a dream without being branded cynical. The wit is in the understatement: "But the fact is" frames the remark like a gentle clarification, while quietly detonating a core American assumption. It lands because it feels like realism, not ideology - the kind of sentence that makes you laugh, then check your wallet.