Quote

They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?

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
Live
Compared
Barbaric
Without
Ignorant
Alongside
Like
Particularly
Europeans
Western
Tolerant
Templars
Century
Crude
Germanic
Read
Mystical
Succumbing
Culture
Vulgar
Libertine
Two
Centuries
Allure

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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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.
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Followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned.
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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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Is it possible to say It was a beautiful morning at the end of November without feeling like Snoopy?
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To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout.
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This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.
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But laughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh.
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We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.
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For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines - some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege - I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words.
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Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.
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Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.
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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.
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[In my writing] I know that I have made a caricature out of [others' academic] theories [but] I think that caricatures are frequently good portraits.
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He who falls in love in bars doesn't need a woman all his own. He can always find one on loan.
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A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor.
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The Roseicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn't exist.
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If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.
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The truth is an anagram of an anagram.
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I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
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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