Quote

The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.

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
Truths
Thrown
Useful
Instruments
Away

More quotes by Umberto Eco

Image
Hypotyposis is the rhetorical effect by which words succeed in rendering a visual scene.
Umberto Eco
Image
Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats.
Umberto Eco
Image
Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity.
Umberto Eco
Image
Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.
Umberto Eco
Image
Translation is the art of failure.
Umberto Eco
Image
I was a fervent Catholic, and I belonged to the national organizations, even becoming one of the national leaders, until the age of 21, 22.
Umberto Eco
Image
I consider always the adult life to be the continuous retrieval of childhood.
Umberto Eco
Image
The good of a book lies in its being read.
Umberto Eco
Image
The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.
Umberto Eco
Image
The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Umberto Eco
Image
But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed? I asked, for no good reason. Is Jorge right? Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .
Umberto Eco
Image
I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
Umberto Eco
Image
but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.
Umberto Eco
Image
National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.
Umberto Eco
Image
The Devil is not the Prince of Matter the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.
Umberto Eco
Image
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.
Umberto Eco
Image
We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.
Umberto Eco
Image
I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.
Umberto Eco
Image
The poets did not win the philosophers surrendered.
Umberto Eco
Image
I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one. When you give a lesson the situation is the same as writing a book. You have to capture the attention, the complicity of your audience.
Umberto Eco