Quote: The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: 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. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: 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. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder of the Bad. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: In the United States there's a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: Translation is the art of failure. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: From lies to forgeries the step is not so long, and I have written technical essays on the logic of forgeries and on the influence of forgeries on history. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder of the Bad. [Umberto Eco]
Quote: A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams. [Umberto Eco]