Quote

Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.

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
Thinking
Feeling
Pleasure
Natural
Feelings
Problem
Professional
Great
Philosopher
Would
Problems
Think
Small

More quotes by Umberto Eco

Image
The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God's will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions.
Umberto Eco
Image
The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.
Umberto Eco
Image
Memory is a stopgap for humans, for whom time flies and what is passed is passed.
Umberto Eco
Image
There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.
Umberto Eco
Image
My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac.
Umberto Eco
Image
I love the smell of book ink in the morning.
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
Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats.
Umberto Eco
Image
Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
Umberto Eco
Image
Translation is the art of failure.
Umberto Eco
Image
And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity.
Umberto Eco
Image
Sometimes my characters are not myself.
Umberto Eco
Image
Narrativity presumes a special taste for plot. And this taste for plot was always very present in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that explains their high quality of detective novels.
Umberto Eco
Image
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
Image
I felt no passion, no jealousy, no nostalgia. I was hollow, clear-headed, clean, and as emotionless as an aluminum pot.
Umberto Eco
Image
When your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies.
Umberto Eco
Image
Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy.
Umberto Eco
Image
There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.
Umberto Eco
Image
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.
Umberto Eco
Image
The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder of the Bad.
Umberto Eco