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I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
Umberto Eco
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Umberto Eco
Age: 84 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 5
Died: 2016
Died: February 19
Essayist
Historian
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Semiotician
Translator
Lissändria
Umberto Ecco
Umberto Eccounstino
Humberto Eco
Dedalus
Umberto Eko
Oumperto Eko
Eco Umberto
U. Eco
Truth
Existential
Come
Witty
Semiotics
Whole
Attempt
Pendulums
Made
Mad
Enigma
Believe
Humorous
Existentialism
Life
Terrible
Harmless
World
Powerful
Underlying
Though
Interpret
More quotes by Umberto Eco
Libraries have always been humanities' way of preserving its collective wisdom
Umberto Eco
I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.
Umberto Eco
Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round.
Umberto Eco
For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - le suggérer, voilà le rêve!).
Umberto Eco
If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.
Umberto Eco
How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see.
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
In other words, although I don't like them, we do need noble-spirited souls.
Umberto Eco
You cannot believe what you are saying. Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry.
Umberto Eco
When your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies.
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
It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
Umberto Eco
Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame.
Umberto Eco
A secret is powerful when it is empty. People often mention the Masonic secret. What on earth is the Masonic secret? No one can tell. As long as it remains empty it can be filled up with every possible notion, and it has power.
Umberto Eco
But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.
Umberto Eco
A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.
Umberto Eco
The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
Umberto Eco
Jacopo Belbo didnt understand that he had had his moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself.
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
I was the type who looked at discussions of What Is Truth only with a view toward correcting the manuscript. If you were to quote I am that I am, for example, I thought that the fundamental problem was where to put the comma, inside the quotation marks or outside.
Umberto Eco
