"Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you"
About this Quote
Ebert is doing something sneakier than offering a feel-good slogan about “trust your feelings.” As a critic, he’s spent a lifetime watching smart people talk themselves into or out of a reaction, using intellect as camouflage. The line quietly flips the usual hierarchy: reason isn’t the sturdy adult in the room, it’s the talented spin doctor. Intellect “may be confused” not because thinking is bad, but because thinking is easily recruited - by ideology, ego, social pressure, or the desire to look sophisticated. Confusion is the natural state of a mind trying to justify what it already wants to believe.
The provocation is in “never lie.” Emotions can be messy, contradictory, even disproportionate, but Ebert treats them as honest data: the body’s immediate verdict before you’ve rehearsed your explanation. That’s classic Ebertian criticism, rooted in the idea that art works first as impact, then as argument. A movie can be flawed and still move you; it can be “important” and leave you cold. He’s granting permission to admit that gap.
The subtext is also defensive: in cultures that prize cleverness, sincerity becomes suspect. Ebert, who wrote with populist clarity and took mainstream pleasures seriously, is pushing back against the performative intellect that mistakes detachment for taste. It’s an ethic as much as an aesthetic: start from the truthful sensation, then let analysis earn its keep.
The provocation is in “never lie.” Emotions can be messy, contradictory, even disproportionate, but Ebert treats them as honest data: the body’s immediate verdict before you’ve rehearsed your explanation. That’s classic Ebertian criticism, rooted in the idea that art works first as impact, then as argument. A movie can be flawed and still move you; it can be “important” and leave you cold. He’s granting permission to admit that gap.
The subtext is also defensive: in cultures that prize cleverness, sincerity becomes suspect. Ebert, who wrote with populist clarity and took mainstream pleasures seriously, is pushing back against the performative intellect that mistakes detachment for taste. It’s an ethic as much as an aesthetic: start from the truthful sensation, then let analysis earn its keep.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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