Michael Haneke Quotes

I've been reading a lot of books on history, and watching a lot of educational TV. Wikipedia too, even though it is not reliable.

When I'm working on historical books, I'm much more organized. I usually read about 100 books to get the depth of knowledge I need.

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.

Universal literacy was a 20th-century goal. Before then, reading and writing were skills largely confined to a small, highly educated class of professional people.

I read more history books than anything else.

I read a lot of history for fun.

There is a city myth that country life was isolated and lonely; the truth is that farmers and their families then had a richer social life than they have now. They enjoyed a society organic, satisfying and whole, not mixed and thinned with the life of town, city and nation as it now is.

I consider it the best part of an education to have been born and brought up in the country.

Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning.

I’m a country boy, so I really appreciate the country. I love fishing, so I fish between takes on set. During lunch, I go for a fish.

If the new Universal History were also read, it would give a connected idea of human affairs, so far as it goes, which should be followed by the best modern histories, particularly of our mother country; then of these colonies; which should be accompanied with observations on their rise, increase, use to Great Britain, encouragements and discouragements, the means to make them flourish, and secure their liberties.

You had a flood of immigrants, millions of them, coming to this country. What brought them here? It was the hope for a better life for them and their children. And, in the main, they succeeded. It is hard to find any century in history, in which so large a number of people experience so great an improvement in the conditions of their life, in the opportunities open to them, as in the period of the 19th and early 20th century.

This country is made up of small towns and big dreams.

The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries.

The study of History is the best medicine for a sick mind.

It is safest to grasp the concept of the postmodern as an attempt to think the present historically in an age that has forgotten how to think historically in the first place.

Once wealth and beauty are gone, there is always rural life.

I'm a city girl and I never really lived in the country, so I'm learning about that.

The American Revolution was the grand operation, which seemed to be assigned by the Deity to the men of this age in our country, over and above the common duties of life

No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance, if he is to shut himself up for a year to study science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he will walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life.

There are 20,000 million books I could have to read, but I can pick the ones and know that I'm learning something that I didn't know before. That's the glory of writing. It's not even so much the writing, it's what you learn - especially history - because so much of it is research.

I was a terrible history student. They taught me history as if it were a visit to a wax museum or to the land of the dead. I was over twenty before I discovered that the past was neither quiet nor mute.

I don't know how anyone gets anything done in New York City. I vastly prefer living in the country. I just need a lot of quiet and solitude, and I'm so easily distracted. I mean, the Internet is enough to deal with.

The man who seeks to educate himself must first read and then travel in order to correct what he has learned.

one day in the country is exactly like another.