Umberto Eco Quotes
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Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, 'How are you, you old scoundrel!' clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.
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I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.
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Today, political events are nullified unless they're on TV.
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After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopaedia.
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There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.
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I don't see the point of having 80 million people online if all they are doing in the end is talking to ghosts in the suburbs.
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If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.
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Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
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We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.
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The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.
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The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.
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What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.
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Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.
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In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty.
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It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.
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Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose.
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In the United States there's a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.
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The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.
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'A sack,' Baudolino explained, like a man who knows a trade well, 'is like a grape harvest: you have to divide the tasks. There are those who press the grapes, those who carry off the must in the tuns, those who cook for others, others who go to fetch the good wine from last year.... a sack is a serious job,'
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Today I realize that many recent exercises in "deconstructive reading" read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity.
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The function of memory is not only to preserve, but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick.
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From lies to forgeries the step is not so long, and I have written technical essays on the logic of forgeries and on the influence of forgeries on history.
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There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.
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If western culture is shown to be rich, it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to 'dissolve' harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.