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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.
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
Possess
Secret
Powerful
Doesn
True
Remember
Matter
Counts
Things
Pretend
More quotes by Umberto Eco
Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious.
Umberto Eco
Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.
Umberto Eco
I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.
Umberto Eco
For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.
Umberto Eco
I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.
Umberto Eco
By means of the sign, man frees himself from the here and now for abstraction.
Umberto Eco
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
Umberto Eco
Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.
Umberto Eco
The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.
Umberto Eco
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used to tell at all.
Umberto Eco
We invented the car, and it made it easier for us to crash and die. If I gave a car to my grandfather, he would die in five minutes, while I have grown up slowly to accept speed.
Umberto Eco
We know that sensory phenomena are transcribed in the photographic emulsion in such a way that even if there is a causal link with the real phenomena, the graphic images can be considered as wholly arbitrary with respect to these phenomena.
Umberto Eco
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.
Umberto Eco
Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence.
Umberto Eco
History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community.
Umberto Eco
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.
Umberto Eco
Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
Umberto Eco
We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.
Umberto Eco
Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.
Umberto Eco
Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.
Umberto Eco