Quotes from Umberto Eco

the frantic desire for the Almost Real arises only as a neurotic reaction to the vacuum of memories; the Absolute Fake is offspring of the unhappy awareness of a present without depth.

There are three requirements for a six-month thesis: 1. The topic should be clearly defined. 2. The topic should be contemporary (notwithstanding the advice given in section 2.3), eliminating the need to explore a bibliography that goes back to the ancient Greeks. Alternatively, it should be a marginal subject on which little has been written. 3. The primary and secondary sources must be locally available and easily accessible.

The understanding of signs is not a mere matter of recognition (of a stable equivalence); it is a matter of interpretation.

Când intr? în joc st?pânirea lucrurilor p?mânteÅŸti, e foarte greu ca oamenii s? gândeasc? aÅŸa cum cere dreptatea.

Metaphors can be read according to multiple interpretations; yet these interpretations can be more or less legitimated on the grounds of an underlying encyclopedic competence.

Characters migrate

Ez ám a siker: általános választások útján hozni létre zsarnoki rendszert! Úgy hajtott végre önkényuralmi puccsot a nyomorult, hogy közben a birka népre hivatkozhatott! Láthatjuk, milyen jövÅ' vár a demokráciára.

the kind of influence printing has had on modern sensibility… : the shattering of the intellectual experience into uniform and repeatable units, the establishment of a sense of homogeneity and continuity that generated, at a distance of centuries, the assembly line, and presided over the ideology of the mechanical age, as well as the cosmology of infinitesimal calculation.

History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter.

Ksi??ka to ubezpieczenie na ?ycie, male?ka antycypacja nie?miertelno?ci.

La ilegitimidad es algo de lo que tenemos que hablar en términos de no tenerla»

El secreto de mi éxito es que de joven descubrí que no era Dios».

Poor idiot! Are you so foolish as to believe we will openly teach you the greatest and most important of secrets? I assure you that anyone who attempts to study, according to the ordinary and literal sense of their words, what the Hermetic Philosophers write, will soon find himself in the twists of a labyrinth from which he will be unable to escape, having no Ariadne's thread to lead him out. —Artephius

the advent of television… destroyed the linear universe of mechanical civilization, inspired by the Gutenbergian model, reestablishing a sort of tribal unity, like a primitive village.

Gustaba a napolitanos y sicilianos, mestizos también ellos, no por error de una madre pelleja sino por historia de generaciones, nacidos de cruces de levantinos desleales, árabes sudorientos y ostrogodos degenerados, que tomaron lo peor de cada uno de sus híbridos antepasados: de los sarracenos, la indolencia; de los suabos, la ferocidad; de los griegos, la infructuosidad y el gusto de perderse en charlas con tal de dividir un pelo en cuatro.

Es muy importante entender que no se es Dios, dudar siempre de los propios actos, y considerar que no se han empleado bastante bien los años vividos. Es la única forma para intentar emplear mejor los que quedan.

In the construction of Immortal Fame you need first of all a cosmic shamelessness.

Grazie Frate Guglielmo, l'imperatore ha bisogno di voi, avete visto che bell'anello che ho, arrivederci.

There are secrets that kill. But

My boy, this is the second time today that wisdom has spoken through your mouth...!

Literature says something and, at the same time, it denies what it has said; it doesn't destroy signs, it make them play and it plays them. If and whether literature is liberation from the power of the given language depends on the nature of this power.

Ce e dragostea? Nu exist? nimic pe lume, nici om, nici diavol ÅŸi nici alt lucru pe care eu s? nu-l socotesc atât de suspect ca dragostea, întrucât aceasta p?trunde în suflet mi mult decât orice altceva. Nu exist? nimic care s? acapareze ÅŸi s? lege sufletul ca dragostea. Întrucât, dac? nu ai acele arme care s-o st?pâneasc?, sufletul cade din pricina dragostei într-o ruin? nem?rginit?.

Han sido legiones los que se han preguntado si Cristo rió. El asunto no me interesa demasiado. Creo que nunca rió porque, como hijo de Dios, era omnisciente y sabía lo que haríamos los cristianos.

La letteratura, contribuendo a formare la lingua, crea identità e comunità.