Michael Haneke Quotes

I don't underestimate audiences' intelligence. Audiences are much brighter than media gives them credit for. When people went to a movie once a week in the 1930s and that was their only exposure to media, you were required to do a different grammar.

I think it's important for anyone who takes cinema seriously not to limit yourself to just optimistic or happy movies. I think that's a problem. You've got to be willing to let the art of cinema take you into some darker places if you're going to make full use of it.

You mustn't underestimate an audience's intelligence.

I love hearing people who are smarter than me talk about my comics. It makes me feel smarter.

I have great faith in the intelligence of the American viewer and reader to put two and two together and come up with four.

I can't see what's wrong about assuming intelligence in your audience and what's bad news about being rewarded for assuming that.

The audience is smart and catch on pretty quick when they are sold the same old thing.

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

The public's not stupid.

So that, to me, is important that audiences are treated with an amount of respect toward their intelligence. Most Hollywood films don't respect their intelligence.

I respect the audience's intelligence a lot, and that's why I don't try to go for the lowest common denominator.

I think if a person plays 'Quantum Conundrum' and they walk away feeling really intelligent and skilled, that's what I want. That's my only goal.

The public are not stupid.

It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education & entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking onto the matter.

Commercial television has underestimated the intelligence of the public.

It would be nice if all people who saw movies had some sort of basic understanding of what they're looking at, but I don't think you can assume that.

Audiences are savvy. You can never go wrong assuming the best of them.

Audiences are smart, and they don't need to be spoon-fed everything.

We should never overestimate an audience's culture, but we should never underestimate their intelligence.

The actors I admire always have something to say, or a level of poetry, belief, activism or intelligence about what they do or how they feel.

Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.

No amount of energy will take the place of thought.

A brain with no heart and no reasoning ... well, nothing is more meaningless.

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

If you ant to feel deeply, you have to think deeply. Too often we separate the two. We assume that if we want to feel deeply, then we need to sit around and, well, feel. But emotion built on emotion is empty. True emotion- emotion that is reliable and does not lead us astray- is always a response to reality, to truth.