Umberto Eco Quotes
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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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Today, political events are nullified unless they're on TV.
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A human best, which is very little. Its hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of God and His omnipotence. So the freedom of God is our condemnation, or at least the condemnation of our pride.
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The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.
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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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Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose.
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Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.
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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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I write what I write.
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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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In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty.
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... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.
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A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.
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I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.
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Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.
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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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National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.
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As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.
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Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.
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New Orleans is not in the grip of a neurosis of a denied past; it passes out memories generously like a great lord; it doesn't have to pursue "the real thing."
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Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.
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I have a good memory. But I would be interested in memory even if I had a bad memory, because I believe that memory is our soul. If we lose our memory completely, we are without a soul.
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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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I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.