Quote

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.

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
Like
Built
Afterward
Imagine
Ladder
Away
Ladders
Order
Attain
Must
Meaningless
Even
Useful
Mind
Throw
Something
Discover
Imagines

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.
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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 psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.
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If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.
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How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.
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The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent centuries killing each other.
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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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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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Conspiracies do exist. Probably in this moment in New York there is an economic group making a conspiracy in order to buy three banks. But if they succeed, they are immediately discovered.
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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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A novel is a machine for generating interpretations.
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In other words, although I don't like them, we do need noble-spirited souls.
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On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century...First of all, what style should I employ?
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A sure sign of a lunatic is that sooner or later, he brings up the Templars.
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In the construction of Immortal Fame you need first of all a cosmic shamelessness.
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How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!
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Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.
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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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Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
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I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
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