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Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

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
Subjected
Inquiry
Believed
Books
Book
Made

More quotes by 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.
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All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.
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Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.
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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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The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.
Umberto Eco
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Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.
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Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame.
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Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.
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We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.
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All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.
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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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It is obvious that the newspaper produces the opinion of the readers.
Umberto Eco
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Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.
Umberto Eco
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In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.
Umberto Eco
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For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.
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You cannot believe what you are saying. Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry.
Umberto Eco
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The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Umberto Eco
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We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we too would become Taliban.
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We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.
Umberto Eco
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I was in a maze. No matter which way I turned, it was the wrong way.
Umberto Eco