"Meet John Doe is a sermon delivered by a master technician. Capra's virtuosity astonishes in the scenes of a mass rally in the rain, the director in his manipulation of crowds and his organising of the images displaying an almost peerless cinematic command."
— Charles Higham, Joel Greenberg, Hollywood in the Forties

"Both the film itself and the way it was created are riddled with cynicism masked as desperation, or desperation masked as cynicism—it's diffcult to tell where the phony sentiment leaves off and the real sentimentality begins. "
— Richard Corliss, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema

"Capra's supposed optimism was a cover for his more fundamental pessimism, and his happy endings which seem tacked on, as in Meet John Doe, represent an inability to reestablish the emotional balance."
— Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success