Michael Haneke Quotes

To question your own process is a necessity. If you don't question yourself, it's impossible to improve.

Art and literature should help us to get out of our mental cocoons.

It's important to have people who will question you occasionally.

You have to be critical of what you do every day, to analyze it and be willing to push it further.

If I'm reading a book that doesn't leave me with questions, moving questions, that I feel confronted with, then for me it's a waste of time. I don't want to read a book that simply confirms what I already know.

The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.

The second you stop questioning yourself is the second that you become the monster. -Merry

What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.

The quality of our questions determine the quality of our lives.

Once we go beyond this and start to open up and question and experience things in a different way, we can move forward.

We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?

We can judge our progress by the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas. If you're ready to listen and if you're ready to be challenged, there's one thing that you can do, but no one can help you. What is this most important thing of all? It's called self-observation.

This self-reflection, this willingness to examine ourselves, to make corrections, to do better, that's part of what makes us Americans. It's part of what sets us apart from other nations, the United States is the most professional, most capable, most cutting-edge intelligence community in the world.

People are experience-rich and theory-poor. I help people organize / make sense of their experiences.

Remember how far you've come, not just how far you have to go.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

Found one of my old journals. from right around the time we were heading out on tour with NFG in the UK early 2008. i started reading it and couldn't help but cry a little bit. cause that person was really confused. and very lost. and as it went on, the person behind the pen seemed to get a little bit stronger.. that part felt good. it was the reminder that i needed that right now i'm as strong as ever. there really isn't a point to telling you all of this. except maybe i want to thank you. cause you are a constant reminder. that i'm not as lost as i once was.

It’s only useful to ask, what wisdom have you learned from your misjudgments that will help you going forward?

I like to sit on things and digest them and then I'll figure out my next move, but I never said I was right for doing anything.

I look at my older writing to see where my weaknesses are and then I try to address those weaknesses and make new mistakes.

Once Paul told her that the beach was like him because it changed every day but it never made any progress. Later she remembered thinking that a normal person might have begun by saying that he was like the beach.

The older you get, you always learn more. Sometimes it's a process of learning about yourself and what your journey is. Sometimes the process moves forward at a rapid pace in a short amount of time - or moves backwards. And you're like, "Man, I thought I had made so much progress, and now all of a sudden, I'm 10 steps further behind than when I started."

People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning.