Michael Haneke Quotes

If anyone has a conscience it's generally a guilty one.

We're all complicit in the things we may be trying to oppose. I'm complicit in the things that I'm trying to oppose.

I know I've done good things, I know I've done bad things.

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so: life's business being just the terrible choice.

That made me feel good, not to go to a resort where outside the door is extreme poverty.

I think sometimes in life we want to ignore the problems of society and just think about the good. I believe in positive thinking and affirmative living, I also think it's really important to remember all of our disenfranchised members of society.

One must denounce the economic, financial, and social mechanisms and structures that are manipulated by the rich and powerful for their own benefit at the expense of the poor

Of course, I have privileges that others don't. But, you don't choose where you are born. If you want to hate me for that, I am sorry.

Awkwardness comes from the realization that, when you look around the world, it's difficult to identify anyone who isn't either the victim or the beneficiary of injustice.

I think that deep in our hearts we know that our comforts, our conveniences are at the expense of other people.

The rich...should beg the poor to forgive us for the bread we bring them. Healthy people sometimes feel they need to beg forgiveness too, although there is no reason why. Maybe we simply ask forgiveness for not being born where these poor women have been born, knowing that if we lived here too, our fate might well have been the same.

Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.

I think having a good life prompts it... anybody who has a good life and looks around them sees the enormous disparity that exists in the world between those people who do and those that don't. I can't say we walk about our guilt a lot, though. If we do, it probably comes out in the form of self-loathing jokes. But it's a tough thing to wrap your head around... the have's and have not's in the world.

To have a sense of sin means to feel guilty at there being an ethical choice to make, a guilt which, however "good" I may become, remains unchanged.

I get guilty when I spend money on silly things like clothes and stuff. Having experienced a completely different extreme of wealth, and I don't mean me being poor or rich, I mean knowing that 40 quid that gets spent on a pair of shoes could go a long way for a family in Georgia for a week or even a month, having experienced that, you're a bit more [guilty].

Some members of the ruling class are making a concerted effort to expand the wealth gap.

The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own time.

If we want to save our country, we must all realize that the breakdown of our culture is trapping millions of people in a cycle of poverty and dependence, and together, we have to do something about it.

You cannot be at home with something that you feel that is wrong, is not right.

If there is anyone who knows what a rigged system looks like, it's Donald Trump, who was able to evade the draft during the height of the Vietnam War when the U.S. was losing on average 1,000 troops every month. That system was clearly rigged in favor of young men from politically influential families, but Donald Trump never complained about that.

I don't mind America becoming a Third World country. The weather is better in the Third World than it is where I live in New Hampshire. And household help will be much cheaper.

Sometimes the scandal is not what law was broken, but what the law allows.

But the truth is the meritocracy is a lie. Those born into wealth and privilege will always be able to game the system for their own benefit and their children's own benefit.

I shouldn't have to be preparing my children that the world is going to be unfair to them for the rest of their lives.

People who have no stake in society are the least likely to have respect for it.