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The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.

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
Belief
Directed
Fact
Producing
Running
Effect
Facts
Illusion
Also
Effects
Time
Cause
Modern
Linear
Causes
Sequence

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Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.
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It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.
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The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts therefore it is dumb.
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You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another. You cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple.
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True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.
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It is obvious that the newspaper produces the opinion of the readers.
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Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.
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A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.
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To survive, you must tell stories.
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He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.
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It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
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Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.
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The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.
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My generation knew pretty well what happened 50 years before our birth. Now I follow all the quiz programs because they are a paramount example of the span of memory of the young generation - they are able to remember everything that happened in their life but not before.
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By means of the sign, man frees himself from the here and now for abstraction.
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As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.
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