Quotes from Umberto Eco

The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.

And when someone suggests you believe in a proposition, you must first examine it to see whether it is acceptable, because our reason was created by God, and whatever pleases our reason can but please divine reason, of which, for that matter, we know only what we infer from the processes of our own reason by analogy and often by negation.

Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.

But can I really will anything? At this moment I feel the pleasure of being stone, the sun warms me, the wind makes acceptable this adjustment of my body, I have no intention of ceasing to be a stone. Why? Because I like it. So then I too am slave to a passion, which advises me against wanting freely its opposite. However, willing, I could will. And yet I do not. How much freer am I than a stone?

For the male who dominates and writes, or by writing dominates, the woman has always been portrayed with hostility from the earliest times. Let us not be deceived by angelic descriptions of women. On the contrary, precisely because great literature is dominated by sweet, gentle creatures, the world of satire—which is that of the popular imagination—continually demonizes the woman, from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and up to modern times.

The simple are meat for slaughter, to be used when they are useful in causing trouble for the opposing power, and to be sacrificed when they are no longer of use.

Jacopo Belbo didn't 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.

If culture did not filter, it would be inane — as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.

The book is like the wheel - once invented, it cannot be bettered.

For two years I have refused to answer idle questions on the order of Is your novel an open work or not? How should I know? That is your business, not mine. Or With which of your characters do you identify? For God's sake, with whom does an author identify? With the adverbs, obviously.

There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.

I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn't like to watch television. I'm just the only one who confesses

Öyle bir an geliyor ki,insan?n içinde bir ÅŸeyler k?r?l?yor;ne enerji ne istek kal?yor. YaÅŸamak gerekir diyorlar ama yaÅŸamak son vadede intihara sürükleyen bir sorun

They say that a cat, if it falls from a window and hits its nose, can lose its sense of smell and then, because cats live by their ability to smell, it can no longer recognize things. I'm a cat that hit its nose.

Los perdedores, como los autodidactas, tienen siempre conocimientos más vastos que los ganadores. Si quieres ganar tienes que saber una cosa sola y no perder tiempo en sabértelas todas; el placer de la erudición está reservado a los perdedores. Cuanto más sabe uno, es que peor le han ido las cosas.

The Roseicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn't exist.

I seal that which was not to be said in the tomb that I become.

What am I?...I say so inasmuch as I am the memory of all my past moments, the sum of everything I remember. If I say I in the sense of that something that is here at this moment and is not the mainmast or the coral, then I am the sum of what I feel now. But what is what I feel now? It is the sum of those relations between presumed indivisibles that have been arranged in that system of relations in that special order that is my body.

The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance.

And so I fell devoutly asleep and slept a long time, because young people seem to need sleep more than the old, who have already slept so much and are preparing to sleep for all eternity.

Hoy no salir en televisión es un signo de elegancia.

El alma humana es la verdadera cópula del mundo porque, por un lado, se dirige hacia lo divino y, por el otro, se introduce en el cuerpo y domina la naturaleza.

The "thesis neurosis" has begun: the student abandons the thesis, returns to it, feels unfulfilled, loses focus, and uses his thesis as an alibi to avoid other challenges in his life that he is too cowardly to address. This student will never graduate.

But it's atheists who say that the world wasn't made by anyone, and you say you're not an atheist . . . I'm not because I can't bring myself to believe that all these things we see around us—the way trees and fruits grow, and the solar system, and our brains—came about by chance. They're too well made. And therefore there must have been a creating mind. God.