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Libraries have always been humanities' way of preserving its collective wisdom

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
Way
Preserving
Always
Libraries
Collectives
Collective
Library
Wise
Humanity
Wisdom
Humanities

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar queen, alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades.
Umberto Eco
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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
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The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.
Umberto Eco
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The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.
Umberto Eco
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Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, How are you, you old scoundrel! clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.
Umberto Eco
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I am an old consumer of papers. I cannot avoid reading my newspapers every morning.
Umberto Eco
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Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.
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.
Umberto Eco
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Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round.
Umberto Eco
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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
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I started to write [The Name of the Rose] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk.
Umberto Eco
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The good of a book lies in its being read.
Umberto Eco
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After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs.
Umberto Eco
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Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.
Umberto Eco
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It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
Umberto Eco
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I don't miss my youth. I'm glad I had one, but I wouldn't like to start over.
Umberto Eco
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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.
Umberto Eco
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Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale.
Umberto Eco
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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.
Umberto Eco
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Originality and creativity are nothing but the result of the wise management of combinations. The creative genius combines more rapidly, and with a greater critical sense of what gets tossed out and what gets saved, the same material that the failed genius has to work with.
Umberto Eco