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I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

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
Think
Gave
Masturbation
Thinking
Early
Sixteen
Life
Poet
Publish
Like
Poetry
Fifteen
Age
Burn
Rather
Poets
Certain
Quickly
Good
Later
Thankfully

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The good of a book lies in its being read.
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If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.
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When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.
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American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100oC
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In the United States there's a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.
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Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish!
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I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.
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I believe all sin, love, glory are this: when you slide down the knotted sheets, escaping from Gestapo headquarters, and she hugs you, there, suspended, and she whispers that she's always dreamed of you. The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.
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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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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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If culture did not filter, it would be inane - as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.
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I have always been fascinated by paranoid people imagining conspiracies. I am fascinated by this in a critical way.
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Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
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I write what I write.
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