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The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent centuries killing each other.

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
Centuries
French
English
Killing
Spent
Century
Italians
Germans
Spanish

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If Bush had read all the documents about the Russians and British in Afghanistan in the 19th century, he would have not done what he did in the 21st. He would have understood how difficult it was to control this territory. He probably didn't read them.
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Beauty is boring because it is predictable.
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Authors frequently say things they are unaware of only after they have gotten the reactions of their readers do they discover what they have said
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But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed? I asked, for no good reason. Is Jorge right? Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .
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The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.
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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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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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And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?
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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.
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[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.
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The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.
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To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.
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The step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief.
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History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community.
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Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
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We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we too would become Taliban.
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It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
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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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It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
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Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.
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