Umberto Eco Quotes & Sayings

In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace. — Umberto Eco

What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better. — Umberto Eco

The book is like the wheel - once invented, it cannot be bettered. — Umberto Eco

You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing- you can always repent, atone : but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing. — Umberto Eco

They dwell in my light, while I dwell in unbearable darkness, the source of that light. — Umberto Eco

Given that there are seven billion people living on this earth, there is a consistent quantity of imbecile or idiot, okay. Previously, these people could express themselves only with their friends or at the bar after two or three glasses of something, and they said every silliness, and people laughed. Now they have the possibility to show up on the internet. And so, on the internet, along with the messages of a lot of interesting and important people - even the Pope is writing on Twitter - we have a great quantity of idiots. — Umberto Eco

At the end of my patient reconstruction, I had before me a kind of lesser library, a symbol of the greater, vanished one: a library made up of fragments, quotations, unfinished sentences, amputated stumps of books. — Umberto Eco

If you could decide on characters' destinies it would be like going to the desk of a travel agent who says: So where do you want to find the whale, in Samoa or in the Aleutian Islands? And when? And do you want to be the one who kills it or let Queequeg do it? Whereas the real lesson of Moby-Dick is that the whale goes wherever it wants. — Umberto Eco

I moved along ancient streets, enchanted by names that sounded like songs: Rua da Agonia, Avenida dos Amores, Travessa de Chico Diabo. Our visit to Salvador took place during a period when the local government, or someone acting in its name, was trying to renew the old city, and was closing down the thousands of brothels. But the project was only at midpoint. At the feet of those deserted and leprous churches embarrassed by their own evil-smelling alleys, fifteen-year-old black prostitutes still swarmed, ancient women selling African sweets crouched along the sidewalks with their steaming pots, and hordes of pimps danced amid trickles of sewage to the sound of transistor radios in nearby bars. The ancient palaces of the Portuguese settlers, surmounted by coats of arms now illegible, had become houses of ill-repute. — Umberto Eco

And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity. — Umberto Eco

Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence. — Umberto Eco

He is always on the brink of suicide ... because he seeks salvation through the routine formulas suggested to him by the society in which he lives. — Umberto Eco

Hitler's one genuine obsession was the underground currents. He believed in the theory of the hollow earth, Hohlweltlehre. — Umberto Eco

Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale. — Umberto Eco

I have to admit that I only read 'War and Peace' when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then. — Umberto Eco

I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed. — Umberto Eco

We live inside a hollow earth, enclosed by the terrestrial surface. Hitler realized this. — Umberto Eco

A newspaper can follow the compulsions, the desires of the readers. Take the English evening newspapers - they are following the readers' desires when they are interested only in the royal family gossip. But even the most objective, serious newspaper in the world designs the way in which the reader could or should think. That's unavoidable. — Umberto Eco

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. — Umberto Eco

William was deeply humiliated. I tried to comfort him; I told him that for three days he had been looking for a text in Greek and it was natural in the course of his examination for him to discard all books not in Greek. And he answered that it is certainly human to make mistakes, but there are some human beings who make more than others, and they are called fools, and he was one of them, and he wondered whether it was worth the effort to study in Paris and Oxford if one was then incapable of thinking that manuscripts are also bound in groups, a fact even novices know, except stupid ones like me, and a pair of clowns like the two of us would be a great success at fairs, and that was what we should do instead of trying to solve mysteries, especially when we were up against people far more clever than we. — Umberto Eco

Most of them won't have a book in the house, though, when they have to, they'll talk about the latest book that's selling millions of copies around the world. Our readers may not read books, but they are fascinated by great eccentric painters who sell for billions. — Umberto Eco

There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it. — Umberto Eco

It is obvious that the newspaper produces the opinion of the readers. — Umberto Eco

You too will seek your fortune, and you must be keen in obtaining it. If here you have learned to dodge a musket ball, there you must learn to elude envy, jealousy, greed, using those same weapons to combat your adversaries, namely, everyone. — Umberto Eco

In other words, to see if through these cultural phenomena a new Middle Ages is to take shape, a time of secular mystics, more inclined to monastic withdrawal than to civic participation. We should see how much, as antidote or as antistrophe, the old techniques of reason may apply, the arts of the Trivium, logic, dialectic, rhetoric. As we suspect that anyone who goes on stubbornly practicing them will be accused of impiety. — Umberto Eco

My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac. — Umberto Eco

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly. — Umberto Eco

There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism. — Umberto Eco

After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes? — Umberto Eco

We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry. — Umberto Eco

I was a fervent Catholic, and I belonged to the national organizations, even becoming one of the national leaders, until the age of 21, 22. — Umberto Eco

You have to seize Opportunity instinctively, without knowing at the time that it is the Opportunity. Is — Umberto Eco

The flame consists of a splendid clarity, of an unusual vigor, and od an ingenious ardor, but possesses the splendid clarity that it may illuminate and the ingenious ardor that it may burn. — Umberto Eco

Beware of faking: people will believe you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don't go together, that he's not being logical, that he's not speaking in good faith. But they've been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to miracle. — Umberto Eco

We'll have to consult Aglie. I doubt that even he knows all these organizations."
"Want to bet? They're his daily bread. But we can put him to the test. Let's add a sect that doesn't exist. Founded recently."
I recalled the curious question of De Angelis, whether I had ever heard of the Tres. And I said: "Tres."
"What's that?" Belbo asked.
"If it's an acrostic, there has to be a subtext," Diotallevi said. "Otherwise my rabbis would not have been able to use the notarikon. Lets see ... Templi Resurgentes Equites Synarchici. That suit you?"
We liked the name, and put it at the bottom of the list.
"With all these conventicles, inventing one more was no mean trick," Diotallevi said in a sudden fit of vanity. — Umberto Eco

As Clark Kent I take care of misunderstood young geniuses; as Superman I punish justly misunderstood old geniuses. I — Umberto Eco

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. — Umberto Eco

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing. — Umberto Eco

There are no stories without meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even when others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries ... — Umberto Eco

The conspiracy theory of society . . . comes from abandoning God and then asking: "Who is in his place?" - Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge, — Umberto Eco

And he continues: Thus it is increasingly necessary you recognize that other congregations of material bodies exist elsewhere in the universe, like this of our world, which the ether encircles in eager embrace — Umberto Eco

My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn't visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books. — Umberto Eco

Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another. — Umberto Eco

I write what I write. — Umberto Eco

The Void is not being, but not being cannot be, ergo the Void cannot be. The reasoning was sound, because it denied the Void while granting that it could be conceived. In fact, we can quite easily conceive things that do not exist. Can a chimera, buzzing in the Void, devour second intentions? No, because chimeras do not exist, in the Void no buzzing can be heard, and intentions are mental things
an intended pear does not nourish us. And yet I can think of a chimera even if it is chimerical, namely, if it is not. And the same with the Void. — Umberto Eco

There, I said to myself, are the reasons for the silence and darkness that surround the library: it is the preserve of learning but can maintain this learning unsullied only if it prevents its reaching anyone at all, even the monks themselves. Learning is not like a coin, which remains whole even through the most infamous transactions; it is, rather, like a very handsome dress, which is worn out through use and ostentation. Is not a book like that, in fact? — Umberto Eco

He offers what is no longer a map, but a strange projection of the entire globe from the point of view of the Pole, the mystic Pole, naturally, and therefore from the point of view of an ideal Pendulum suspended from an ideal keystone. This is a map specially conceived to be placed beneath a Pendulum! It's obvious, undeniable; I can't imagine why somebody hasn't already seen - — Umberto Eco

They're still there," Salon said. "Not in Agarttha, but in tunnels. Perhaps beneath us, right here. Milan, too, has a metro. Who decided on it? Who directed the excavations?" "Expert engineers, I'd say." "Yes, cover your eyes with your hands. And meanwhile, in that firm of yours, you publish such books ... How many Jews are there among your authors?" "We don't ask our authors to fill out racial forms," I replied stiffly. "You mustn't think me an anti-Semite. No, some of my best friends ... I have in mind a certain kind of Jew ... " "What kind?" "I know what kind ... — Umberto Eco

Machines, he said, are an effect of art, which is nature's ape, and they reproduce not its forms but the operation itself. — Umberto Eco

Throughout our lives, after all, we look for a story of our origins, to tell us why we were born and why we have lived. — Umberto Eco

The German lives in a state of perpetual intestinal embarrassment due to an excess of beer and the pork sausages on which he gorges himself. — Umberto Eco

The outcast lepers would like to drag everything down in their ruin. And they become all the more evil, the more you cast them out; and the more you depict them as a court of lemurs who want your ruin, the more they will be outcast. — Umberto Eco

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. — Umberto Eco

For what I saw at the abbey then (and will now recount) caused me to think that often inquisitors create heretics. And not only in the sense that they imagine heretics where these do not exist, but also that inquisitors repress the heretical putrefaction so vehemently that many are driven to share in it, in their hatred for the judges. Truly, a circle conceived by the Devil. God preserve us. — Umberto Eco

The dove, as it flies in the sun, seems simply to sparkle like silver, but only one who has been able to wait at length to discover its hidden face will see its true gold or, rather, the color of a shining orange. — Umberto Eco

We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay. — Umberto Eco

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist.
Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article! — Umberto Eco

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories. — Umberto Eco

And anyone who nurtures impossible hopes is already a loser. Once you come to realize it, you just give up. — Umberto Eco

He had perhaps seen fifty springs and was therefore already very old, but his tireless body moved with an agility I myself often lacked. — Umberto Eco

[ ... ] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do. — Umberto Eco

People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged. — Umberto Eco

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. — Umberto Eco

Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world. — Umberto Eco

The sun is good because it does the body good, and because it has the sense to reappear every day; therefore, whatever returns is good, not what passes and is done with. — Umberto Eco

I do not ask much, only Total Power — Umberto Eco

Human beings are religious animals. — Umberto Eco

You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. when you feel that need, you have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus. — Umberto Eco

You tell me these two were my parents, so now I know but it's a memory that you've given me. I'll remember the photo from now on, but not them. — Umberto Eco

The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond. — Umberto Eco

I've always said that I learned the English I know through two sources
Marvel Comics and Finnegans Wake. — Umberto Eco

I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn't like to watch television. I'm just the only one who confesses — Umberto Eco

The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is. — Umberto Eco

You'll come back To me ... It's written in the stars, you see, you'll come back. You'll come back, it's a fact that I am strong because I do believe in you. — Umberto Eco

Originality and creativity are nothing but the result of the wise management of combinations. The creative genius combines more rapidly, and with a greater critical sense of what gets tossed out and what gets saved, the same material that the failed genius has to work with. — Umberto Eco

After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs. — Umberto Eco

It seems to me that more plots have been imagined than really exist. — Umberto Eco

I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion. — Umberto Eco

Have you ever wondered why in the last century all the great metropolises hastened to build subways?" "To solve traffic problems?" "Before there were automobiles, when there were only horse-drawn carriages? From — Umberto Eco

That is a real attitude - to see everything as being meaningful, even the less important things, to prove something, even the greater problems of life. — Umberto Eco

But can I really will anything? At this moment I feel the pleasure of being stone, the sun warms me, the wind makes acceptable this adjustment of my body, I have no intention of ceasing to be a stone. Why? Because I like it. So then I too am slave to a passion, which advises me against wanting freely its opposite. However, willing, I could will. And yet I do not. How much freer am I than a stone? — Umberto Eco

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. once invented, it cannot be improved — Umberto Eco

Simple mechanisms do not love. — Umberto Eco

I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers where you just repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation' and 'To conclude'. — Umberto Eco

Only by having a sense of history's trajectory (even if one does not believe in Parousia) can one love earthly reality and believe - with charity - that there is still room for Hope. — Umberto Eco

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer isn't aware of. — Umberto Eco

But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn't believe in it? — Umberto Eco

Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed. — Umberto Eco

Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish! — Umberto Eco

A great problem of the internet is how to filter information, how to discard what is not relevant or what is silly and to keep only the important information. — Umberto Eco

It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things. — Umberto Eco

If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot. — Umberto Eco

It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio. — Umberto Eco

Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. — Umberto Eco

Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names. — Umberto Eco

Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths. — Umberto Eco

Then why do you want to know?"
"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. — Umberto Eco

There are two forms of magic. There is a magic that is the work of the Devil and which aims at man's downfall through artifices of which it is not licit to speak. But there is a magic that is divine, where God's knowledge is made manifest through the knowledge of man, and it serves to transform nature, and one of its ends is to prolong man's very life. — Umberto Eco

Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets. — Umberto Eco

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective. — Umberto Eco