Quotes from Umberto Eco

Will you tell me, William, you who know so much about heretics that you seem one of them, where the truth lies? Nowhere, at times, William said, sadly. You see? You yourself can no longer distinguish between one heretic and another. I at least have a rule. I know that heretics are those who endanger the order that sustains the people of God. And I defend the empire because it guarantees this order for me.

I had always believed logic was a universal weapon, and now I realized how its validity depended on the way it was employed. Further, since I had been with my master I had become aware, and was to become even more aware in the days that followed, that logic could be especially useful when you entered it but then left it.

Libertà e liberazione sono un compito che non finisce mai.

Lampedusa, Bassani y Cassola. Por mi parte, hoy

What is frequently appreciated in many so-called symbols is exactly their vagueness, their openness, their fruitful ineffectiveness to express a 'final' meaning, so that with symbols and by symbols one indicates what is always beyond one's reach.

Uvek je neophodno pripisati nekome krivicu za sopstvene neuspehe, diktature uvek pronalaze spoljašnjeg neprijatelja da bi njihove vlastite pristalice zbile svoje redove. Kao što je neko ve? rekao, za svaki složeni problem postoji jednostavno rešenje koje je uvek pogrešno.

But even this writer writes in the hope, not all that secret, that his book itself will create, and in great quantity, many new exemplars of this reader, desired and pursued with such craftsmanlike precision, and postulated, encouraged, by his text.

Here, on the one hand, nobody respects silence any more. On the other, it is respected too much. Here, instead of talking or remaining silent, we should act.

I shall not indulge in descriptions of persons because, as Boethius says, nothing is more fleeting than the external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn; and what would be the point of saying today that the abbot Abo had a stern eye and pale cheeks, when by now he and those around him are dust and their bodies have the mortal grayness of dust?

The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than the catalogue, an instrument of wonderous hypotyposis.

L'Ur- Fascismo parla la neolingua. [...] Tutti i testi scolastici nazisti o fascisti si basavano su un lessico povero e su una sintassi elementare, al fine di limitare gli strumenti per il ragionamento complesso e critico. Ma dobbiamo essere pronti a identificare altre forme di neolingua, anche quando prendono la forma innocente di un popolare talk-show.

I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.

finis Africae

Ogni qual volta un politico getta dubbi sulla legittimità del parlamento perché non rappresenta più la voce del popolo, possiamo sentire l'odore di Ur-Fascismo.

Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame.

Por todo lo cual, estaba reflexionando que, si a veces la religión es o ha sido el opio del pueblo, quizá más a menudo ha sido su cocaína

Sin unos ojos que lo lean, un libro contiene signos que no producen conceptos. Y por tanto, es mudo.

I was upset. I had always believed logic was a universal weapon, and now I realized how its validity depended on the way it was employed. Further, since I had been with my master I had become aware, and was to become even more aware in the days that followed, that logic could be especially useful when you entered it but then left it.

Do not fear the darkness; it does not threaten, but protects us.

Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything... He is nearsighted and methodical, avoiding wide horizons. If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity.

El amor es como una enfermedad rebelde, que solo con el amor se cura, una enfermedad de la que el paciente no quiere curar, de la que el enfermo no quiere curar, de la que el enfermo no quiere recuperarse (...)

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.

In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.

Es posible que la realidad no sólo sobrepase a la ficción, sino que la preceda, o más bien se apresura con adelanto, a reparar los daños que la ficción reparará?