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
I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.
Umberto Eco
Image
I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
Umberto Eco
Image
Ugliness is more inventive than beauty. Beauty always follows certain camps. I think it's more amusing - ugliness - than beauty.
Umberto Eco
Image
How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by the often perverse wisdom of man!
Umberto Eco
Image
We like lists because we don't want to die.
Umberto Eco
Image
True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.
Umberto Eco
Image
Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.
Umberto Eco
Image
[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.
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 Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.
Umberto Eco
Image
A great problem of the internet is how to filter information, how to discard what is not relevant or what is silly and to keep only the important information.
Umberto Eco
Image
At most, recognizing that our history was inspired by many tales we now recognize as false should make us alert, ready to call to constantly into question the very tale we believe true, because the criterion of the wisdom of the community is based on constant awareness of the fallibility of our learning.
Umberto Eco
Image
I love the smell of book ink in the morning.
Umberto Eco
Image
Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.
Umberto Eco
Image
Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.
Umberto Eco
Image
There are no stories without meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even when others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries.
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
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
Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.
Umberto Eco
Image
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