Quotes from Umberto Eco

This man, I thought, was on the wrong track. You can never create danger that has a thousand different faces — danger has to have one face alone, otherwise people become distracted. If you want to expose the Jews, then talk about the Jews, not the Irish, the Neapolitan monarchy, Piedmontese generals, Polish patriots and Russian nihilists.

Los perdedores y los autodidactas siempre saben mucho más que los ganadores. Si quieres ganar, tienes que concentrarte en un solo objetivo, y más te vale no perder el tiempo en saber más: el placer de la erudición está reservado a los perdedores

Races improve the race, and all these games lead fortunately to the death of the best, allowing mankind to continue its existence serenely with normal protagonists, of average achievement.

Intentar entender al otro significa destruir los clichés que lo rodean, sin negar ni borrar su alteridad. Pero

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. Unfortunately war also involves the reluctant, and therefore it is morally inferior to spectator sports.

io devo sapere. Devo Dovete? Chi ve lo impone, ormai? Nessuno ci impone di sapere, Adso. Si deve, ecco tutto, anche a costo di capire male

You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing—you can always repent, atone—but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing. I

I concluded that although instruments, whether empirical or conjectural, exist to prove that some object is false, every decision in the matter presupposes the existence of an original, authentic and true, to which the fake is compared. The truly genuine problem thus does not consist of proving something false but in proving that the authentic object is authentic.

Mant???n evrensel bir silah olduÄŸuna inanm??t?m her zaman; ÅŸimdiyse mant???n geçerliÄŸinin onun nas?l kullan?ld???na baÄŸl? olduÄŸunun bilincine var?yordum.

Opera aperta is a polemical book, in marked conflict with the Crocean aesthetics that dominated the Italian academic world in the early sixties.

Sport, in the sense of a situation in which one person, with no financial incentive, and employing his own body directly, performs physical exercises in which he exerts his muscles, causes his blood to circulate and his lungs to work to their fullest capacity: Sport, as I was saying, is something very beautiful, at least as beautiful as sex, philosophical reflection, and pitching pennies.

Salon'un sezgileri dogru cikiyordu: Asagi yukari Foucault zamaninda, Bacon kanadinin yarattigi sanayi dunyasi, metro aglari ormek icin Avrupa baskentlerinin yuregini kazmaya baslamisti.

Whatever the rhythm was, luck rewarded us, because, wanting connections, we found connections — always, everywhere, and between everything. The world exploded in a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else…

traición. Y es que siempre pasa lo mismo, cuando fracasas en algo, buscas siempre alguien a quien acusar de tu incapacidad. Pero qué traición, me decía, es que no sabéis cómo se combate, pues anda que hacer la revolución…

Åžimdi anl?yorum ki, istemin buyruÄŸunun kendini göstermesi gereken düÅŸünsen açl?kla insan tutkular?n?n öznesi olan duygusal açl?k aras?ndaki çeliÅŸkiden ötürü ac? çekiyormuÅŸum.

To All the World: I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid, concentric spheres; one within the other, and that it is open at the poles twelve or sixteen degrees. —J. Cleves Symmes of Ohio, late Captain of Infantry, April 10, 1818; quoted in Sprague de Camp and Ley, Lands Beyond, New York, Rinehart, 1952, x

Su deprimido libertinaje intelectual ocultaba un desesperado anhelo de absoluto. Era difícil percibirlo a primera vista, porque Belbo compensaba los momentos de fuga, perplejidad, distanciamiento, con momentos de relajada afabilidad, en los que se entretenía creando otras formas de absoluto, con regocijada incredulidad.

Finally, remember this fundamental principle: the more you narrow the field, the better and more safely you will work. Always prefer a monograph to a survey. It is better for your thesis to resemble an essay than a complete history or an encyclopedia.

But then, apart from politicians and the pope, why does anyone else use Twitter? Perhaps to feel important.

Però ho capito che per indurre un francese a riconoscere una tara della sua genìa basta parlargli male di un altro popolo, come a dire "noi polacchi abbiamo questo o quest'altro difetto" e, poiché non vogliono essere secondi a nessuno, neppure nel male, subito reagiscono con "oh no, qui in Francia siamo peggio" e via a sparlare dei francesi, sino a che non si rendono conto che li hai presi in trappola.

La raíz es Aum o Um, que por lo demás es el Om budista, es el nombre de Dios en la lengua adámica. Um es una sílaba que, debidamente pronunciada, se convierte en un mantra poderosísimo y provoca en la psique corrientes fluídicas de armonía a través de la siakra o Plexo Frontal.

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

Fire is therefore too many things and – as well as being a psychological phenomenon – it becomes a symbol, and like all symbols it is ambiguous, polysemic and evokes different meanings according to the situation.

Visionaries see only what their culture has taught them to see and allows them to imagine.