Quote

What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.

Umberto Eco

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Hurt
Believers
Years
Fifteen
Really
Since
Midst
Think
Felt
Believer
Thinking
Better
Guilty
Might
Decide
Take
Seemed
Nonbeliever
Right
Decided
Aspirin
Believe

More quotes by Umberto Eco

Image
There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.
Umberto Eco
Image
I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
Umberto Eco
Image
All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.
Umberto Eco
Image
the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.
Umberto Eco
Image
There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.
Umberto Eco
Image
Then why do you want to know? Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.
Umberto Eco
Image
He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.
Umberto Eco
Image
Love is wiser than wisdom.
Umberto Eco
Image
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.
Umberto Eco
Image
American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100oC
Umberto Eco
Image
I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays
Umberto Eco
Image
It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
Umberto Eco
Image
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
Umberto Eco
Image
Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
Umberto Eco
Image
A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.
Umberto Eco
Image
We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
Umberto Eco
Image
And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.
Umberto Eco
Image
They say that a cat, if it falls from a window and hits its nose, can lose its sense of smell and then, because cats live by their ability to smell, it can no longer recognize things. I'm a cat that hit its nose.
Umberto Eco
Image
But laughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh.
Umberto Eco
Image
The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding whatsoever.
Umberto Eco