Umberto Eco Quotes
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used 'to tell' at all.
Quotes to Explore
-
It's very hard to be an innovator at the highest level in any discipline. For some chefs it's merely about combining ingredients, but that's something you can do with your eyes closed.
-
The truth doesn't hurt unless it ought to.
-
I think that a lot of guys reach for electronics first, but the truth is that you can never keep up with electronics. You buy a flat-screen TV, and then six months later, there's one that has 3D and Blu-ray and all this business, and that is just going to keep continuing.
-
Sometimes you've got to know when it's time to leave the party.
-
People talk about 'getting rid of the old image', and I guess there's some merit in that. But the truth is that people loved 'The Wonder Years' - I can't turn my back on it.
-
You get on the radio by writing your own songs. But we had the dilemma of not being able to play anywhere because we weren't able to play anything that anyone wanted to hear. So we learned songs that we thought that we could do without puking.
-
I was very shy, but when I performed, I felt like I was in my own little world. I became more confident. Dancing taught me discipline and to feel comfortable in my own skin.
-
I like the lasso of truth. There is something so beautiful about the fact that people have to tell the truth when they have the lasso around them. And it's not too violent.
-
It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
-
I hated school, didn't like the discipline.
-
Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.
-
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
-
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-
Science, almost from its beginnings, has been truly international in character. National prejudices disappear completely in the scientist's search for truth.
-
When you come through a business education, a lot of what they teach you is to make decisions through analysis, and logic and rationale, and I'm a big believer in that. But I also believe in the power of instinct. The truth is you're never going to have a perfect answer or view of how it is going to work.
-
Attributing to anything or anyone more good than God has attributed to them is not a positive move, nor does it mean that you have done them any good. A single grain of truth is preferable to a bumper harvest of false imaginings.
-
When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.
-
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
-
A wrong understanding is interested in precisionism. That is it tries to say that the Bible can't be telling the truth if it says that Jesus was such and such a distance from some place or other and in fact the distance is off by 15% or something like that. There are all kinds of grounded figures and so forth.
-
At restaurants, I try to tell them not to bring the bread basket, but what's the point of going out to eat if I can't enjoy it?
-
I have no way of knowing that your story is not true - but you have no way of knowing that my story isn't true. So I will choose the one that I love. I will close the one that, if it's true, makes this reality one worth living in. I'll act as if the life I hope for is real life, and the life that disgusts me - your life, your view of life - is the lie.
-
There are no small steps in great affairs.
-
A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start.
-
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used 'to tell' at all.
