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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.

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
Christian
Missionary
Become
Thrown
Country
Prison
Going
Countries
Pluralist
Would
Allow
Kabul
Built
Missionaries
Simply
Mosques
Stop
Civilisation

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The poets did not win the philosophers surrendered.
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What we honor as prudence in our elders is simply panic in action.
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True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.
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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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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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How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.
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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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You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.
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You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another. You cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple.
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I felt like poisoning a monk.
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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.
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I consider always the adult life to be the continuous retrieval of childhood.
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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.
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I've always said that I learned the English I know through two sources -- Marvel Comics and Finnegans Wake.
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I'm always fascinated by losers. Also, in my Foucault's Pendulum, the main characters, who are in a way losers, they are more interesting than the winners.
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