Quotes from Umberto Eco

European identity, it seems, is only perceived by educated people. And that is sad, but it is a start.

In a certain sense I could agree with the Futurists that war is the only hygiene of the world, except for one little correction: It would be, if only volunteers were allowed to wage it.

Because reasoning about causes and effects is a very difficult thing, and I believe the only judge of that can be God. We are already hard put to establish a relationship between such an obvious effect as a charred tree and the lightning bolt that set fire to it, so to trace sometimes endless chains of causes and effects seems to me as foolish as trying to build a tower that will touch the sky.

Porque de tres cosas depende la belleza: en primer lugar, de la integridad o perfección, y por eso consideramos feo lo incompleto; luego, de la justa proporción, o sea de la consonancia; por último, de la claridad y la luz.

Es inútil, ya no tenemos la sabiduría de los antiguos, ¡se acabó la época de los gigantes! -Somos enanos -admitió Guillermo-, pero enanos subidos a los hombros de aquellos gigantes, y, aunque pequeños, a veces logramos ver más allá de su horizonte.

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?

Agora selo o que não devia ser dito,no túmulo em que me torno.

La seule chose qu'on écrit pour soi, c'est la liste des courses. Elle sert à vous rappeler ce que vous devez acheter, et une fois vos achats accomplis, vous pouvez la jeter car elle ne sert plus à personne. Tout ce que vous écrivez d'autre, vous l'écrivez pour dire quelque chose à quelqu'un.

I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers where you just repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation' and 'To conclude'.

The fact that for tens of thousands of years humanity has used warfare as a solution for states of disequilibrium has no more demonstrable value than the fact that in the same period humanity learned to resolve states of psychological imbalance by using alcohol or other equally devastating substances.

Die Menschen tun das Böse nie so vollständig und begeistert, wie wenn sie es aus religiöser Überzeugung tun.

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon

Jedes Geschöpf der Welt ist uns gleichsam ein Buch und Gemälde und Spiegel. (Every creature of the world is to us at once a book and painting and mirror.)

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

The point is that newspapers are not there for spreading news but for covering it up. X happens, you have to report it, but it causes embarrassment for too many people, so in the same edition you add some shock headlines - mother kills four children, savings at risk of going up in smoke, letter from Garibaldi insulting his lieutenant Nino Bixio discovered, etc. - so news drowns in a great sea of information.

Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.

Aspirar a algo que no tendrás jamás, ¿es ésta la agudeza del más generoso entre los deseos?

An old saying had it that war is too serious to be left to the military. These days it needs bringing up to date: the world has become too complex to be left to those who used to run it.

Jangan percaya begitu saja pada apa yang disebut sebagai sejarah

Where is all my wisdom, then? I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe.

O mundo está cheio de livros fantásticos que ninguém lê

Holography could prosper only in America, a country obsessed with realism, where, if a reconstruction is to be credible, it must be absolutely iconic, a perfect likeness, a "real" copy of the reality being represented.

there is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy, a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History, and, even, with the European tradition.

The others believed me wise because I won, but they didn't know the many instances in which I have been foolish because I lost, and they didn't know that a few seconds before winning I wasn't sure I wouldn't lose.