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The Fundamental Principle that governs - or ought to govern -human affairs if we wish to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or pointless utopias, is negotiation.

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
Principle
Negotiation
Avoid
Misunderstanding
Conflict
Pointless
Ought
Govern
Utopias
Principles
Affairs
Misunderstandings
Wish
Fundamental
Governs
Human
Affair
Utopia
Humans
Fundamentals
Conflicts

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A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis.
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The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.
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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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Man's principle trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absense of universal gullibility?
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In the construction of Immortal Fame you need first of all a cosmic shamelessness.
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The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.
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Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats.
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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.
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When your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies.
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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.
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And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?
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On sober reflection, I find few reasons for publishing my Italian version of an obscure, neo-Gothic French version of a seventeenth century Latin edition of a work written in Latin by a German Monk toward the end of the fourteenth century...First of all, what style should I employ?
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Every man is obsessed by the memories of his own youth.
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When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.
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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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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.
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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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An idea you have might not be original. But by creating a novel out of that idea you can make it original.
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