Umberto Eco Quotes

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.

They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?

...we can only add to the world, where we believe it ends, more parts similar to those we already know (an expanse made again and always of water and land, stars and skies).

The Fundamental Principle that governs - or ought to govern -human affairs if we wish to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or pointless utopias, is negotiation.

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.

We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

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.

We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.

Authors frequently say things they are unaware of; only after they have gotten the reactions of their readers do they discover what they have said

What did I really think fifteen years ago? A nonbeliever, I felt guilty in the midst of all those believers. And since it seemed to me that they were in the right, I decided to believe, as you might decide to take an aspirin: It can't hurt and you might get better.

The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.