Umberto Eco Quotes - Page 2

The problem with the Internet is that it gives you everything - reliable material and crazy material. So the problem becomes, how do you discriminate?

Then why do you want to know?" "Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault's Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations - the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.

True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake.

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.

We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.

When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

When you are on the dancefloor, there is nothing to do but dance.

I don't miss my youth. I'm glad I had one, but I wouldn't like to start over.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

Translation is the art of failure.

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... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.

There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep.

What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.

The older I grow and the more I abandon myself to God's will, the less I value intelligence that wants to know and will that wants to do; and as the only element of salvation I recognize faith, which can wait patiently, without asking too many questions.

The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.

Writing doesn't mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.