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Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.

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
Would
Reflects
Whoever
Four
Born
Better
Things
Never

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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.
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We like lists because we don't want to die.
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Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.
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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.
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There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.
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Libraries can take the place of God.
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By means of the sign, man frees himself from the here and now for abstraction.
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It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.
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In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.
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For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines - some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege - I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words.
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To imagine secret societies and conspiracy is a way not to react to the social and political life. Because you say, We don't know who they are. We cannot react without reasoning. So it is a way to keep people far from the political environment.
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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.
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The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.
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I write stories about conspiracies and paranoid characters while I am, in fact, a very skeptical person.
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It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.
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There are two kinds of friendship: one is genuine affection, the other is inability to refuse.
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Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.
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Is it possible to say It was a beautiful morning at the end of November without feeling like Snoopy?
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My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.
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The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.
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