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Umberto Eco Quotes | Quotes said by Umberto Eco

  • Umberto Eco Quote #1

    ... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #2

    ...a book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands. If for a hundred and a hundred years everyone had been able freely to handle our codices, the majority of them would no longer exist. So the librarian protects them not only against mankind but also against nature, and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion, the enemy of truth.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #3

    [...] there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #4

    315Beauty is, in some way, boring. Even if its concept changes through the ages… a beautiful object must always follow certain rules. A beautiful nose shouldn’t be longer than that or shorter than that, on the contrary, an ugly nose can be as long as the one of Pinocchio, or as big as the trunk of an elephant, or like the beak of an eagle, and so ugliness is unpredictable, and offers an infinite range of possibility. Beauty is finite, ugliness is infinite like God.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #5

    A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #6

    A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #7

    A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #8

    A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #9

    A scoundrel is an evil heliotrope turning always in the direction of the most powerful.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #10

    A te închipui un element necesar în ordinea universului echivaleaza, pentru noi, oamenii cu lecturi serioase, cu ceea ce e supersti?ia pentru analfabe?i. Nu se schimba lumea cu ideile. Persoanele cu pu?ine idei sunt mai pu?in supuse erorii, se iau dupa ceea ce fac to?i ?i nu deranjeaza pe nimeni, ?i reu?esc, se îmboga?esc, ajung la pozi?ii solide, deputa?i, oameni cu decora?ii, oameni de litere renumi?i, academicieni, jurnali?ti. Po?i sa mai fii nerod când î?i faci a?a de bine propriile afaceri? Prostul sunt eu, care am vrut sa ma bat cu morile de vânt.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #11

    After all, the fundamental question of philosophy (like that of psychoanalysis) is the same as the question of the detective novel: who is guilty?

  • Umberto Eco Quote #12

    After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?

  • Umberto Eco Quote #13

    All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #14

    American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100
    degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad
    stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American
    percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes,
    served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure
    spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup
    contains more caffeine than four espressos.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #15

    And in that moment I experience a revelation.

    I realize now that it was a painful sense that the world is purposeless, the lazy fruit of a misunderstanding, but in that moment I was able to translate what I felt only as: God does not exist.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #16

    And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

  • Umberto Eco Quote #17

    Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #18

    Atât de mare e puterea adevarului care, precum binele, se raspânde?te de la sine.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #19

    Beauty is boring because it is predictable.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #20

    Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #21

    Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means...

  • Umberto Eco Quote #22

    But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares.

    So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans.

    What a disappointment, I said. I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood?

  • Umberto Eco Quote #23

    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.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #24

    But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #25

    But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #26

    But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn't believe in it?

  • Umberto Eco Quote #27

    But why do some people support [the heretics]?
    Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power.
    Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?
    That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #28

    But why, everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #29

    Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale.

  • Umberto Eco Quote #30

    Cartea a dovedit ce poate, ?i nu vedem un alt obiect mai bun pe care l-am putea crea pentru aceea?i întrebuin?are.

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