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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
Powerful
Doesn
True
Remember
Matter
Counts
Things
Pretend
Possess
Secret

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.
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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.
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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.
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Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.
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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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I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
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Contemporary societies have lost the sense of the feast but have kept the obscure drive for it.
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One of the problems I have always discussed is the refusal to distinguish between comment and fact. The newspaper wraps every fact into a comment. It is impossible to give mere fact without establishing point of view.
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A sure sign of a lunatic is that sooner or later, he brings up the Templars.
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It is sometimes hard to grasp the difference between identifying with one's own roots, understanding people with other roots, and judging what is good or bad.
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Not bad, not bad at all, Diotallevi said. To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.
Umberto Eco
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The more elusive and ambiguous a symbol is, the more it gains significance and power.
Umberto Eco
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Jacopo Belbo didnt understand that he had had his moment and that it would have to be enough for him, for all his life. Not recognizing it, he spent the rest of his days seeking something else, until he damned himself.
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Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round.
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The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.
Umberto Eco
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There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.
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If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.
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A library's ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste's stall, a place for trouvailles.
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But it has often happened that I have found the most seductive depictions of sin in the pages of those very men of incorruptible virtue who condemned their spell and their effects.
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What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?
Umberto Eco