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Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.

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
Interpretive
Deciding
Talked
Kind

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.
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What we honor as prudence in our elders is simply panic in action.
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A human best, which is very little. Its hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of God and His omnipotence. So the freedom of God is our condemnation, or at least the condemnation of our pride.
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At most, recognizing that our history was inspired by many tales we now recognize as false should make us alert, ready to call to constantly into question the very tale we believe true, because the criterion of the wisdom of the community is based on constant awareness of the fallibility of our learning.
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I consider always the adult life to be the continuous retrieval of childhood.
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There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.
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It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
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Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for.
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The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.
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I felt like poisoning a monk.
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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.
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The art of splitting hairs four ways. This is the department of useless techniques. Mechanical Avunculogratulation, for example, is how to build machines for greeting uncles. We're not sure, though, if Pylocatabasis belongs, since it's the art of being saved by a hair. Somehow that doesn't seem completely useless.
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The real hero is always a hero by mistake he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
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You’ll come back To me . . . It’s written in the stars, you see, you’ll come back. You’ll come back, it’s a fact that I am strong because I do believe in you.
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Is it worth it to be born if you cannot remember it later? And, technically speaking, had I ever been born? Other people, of course, said that I was. As far as I know, I was born in late April, at sixty years of age, in a hospital room.
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For many years I have devoted articles and essays to newspapers, from the inside. So criticism of the newspapers was a topic that I practiced for a long time.
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It was awkward, revisiting a world you have never seen before: like coming home, after a long journey, to someone else’s house.
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In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.
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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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Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
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