Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.