Umberto Eco Famous Quotes

Luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene. ~ Umberto Eco

Idiot. Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business. A moment later the couple went off
he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter
their first and last encounter
with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude? ~ Umberto Eco

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

I'm always fascinated by losers. Also, in my "Foucault's Pendulum," the main characters, who are in a way losers, they are more interesting than the winners. ~ Umberto Eco

But Roberto already knew what the Jesuit's real objection would be. Like that of the abbe on that evening of the duel when Saint-Savin provoked him: If there are infinite worlds, the Redemption can no longer have any meaning, and we are obliged either to imagine infinite Calvaries or to look on our terrestrial flowerbed as a priveleged spot of the Cosmos, on which God permitted His Son to descend and free us from sin, while the other worlds were not granted this grace
to the discredit of His infinite goodness. ~ Umberto Eco

Who among us is living in the past? You, who would bestow the horrors of the toiling industrial age upon this country, or I, who wish that our poor Europe might recover the naturalness and faith of these children of slaves? ~ Umberto Eco

To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was. ~ Umberto Eco

They keep saying that their kingdom is not of this world, then take everything they can lay their hands on. ~ Umberto Eco

Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking. ~ Umberto Eco

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis. ~ Umberto Eco

But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed?" I asked, for no good reason. "Is Jorge right?" "Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave ... ~ Umberto Eco

I started to write [ The Name of the Rose ] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk. ~ Umberto Eco

I could work in the shower if I had plastic paper. ~ Umberto Eco

For many years I have devoted articles and essays to newspapers, from the inside. So criticism of the newspapers was a topic that I practiced for a long time. ~ Umberto Eco

There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past ("en me retraçant ces détails, j'en suis à me demander s'ils sont réels, ou bien si je les ai rêvés"). As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten. ~ Umberto Eco

This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain. ~ Umberto Eco

Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text. ~ Umberto Eco

The west has decided to channel money and effort into studying other customs and practices, but no one has really given other people the chance to study western customs and practices, except at schools maintained by white expatriates, or by allowing the rich from other cultures to study in Oxford or Paris. What happens then is that they return home to organise fundamentalist movements, because they feel solidarity with those of their compatriots who lack the opportunity for such education. ~ Umberto Eco

It's so beautiful. ~ Umberto Eco

I dared, for the first and last time in my life, to express a theological conclusion: But how can a necessary being exist totally polluted with the possible? What difference is there, then, between God and primogenial chaos? Isn't affirming God's absolute omnipotence and His absolute freedom with regard to His own choices tantamount to demonstrating that God does not exist? ~ Umberto Eco

And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist.
Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices. Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article! ~ Umberto Eco

I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and truimph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys ... ~ Umberto Eco

Before the eyes of monks intent on meditation, what is the meaning of those ridiculous grotesques, those monstrous shapes and shapely monsters? Those sordid apes? Those lions, those centaurs, those half-human creatures, with mouths in their bellies, with single feet, ears like sails? Those spotted tigers, those fighting warriors, those hunters blowing their horns, and those many bodies with single heads and many heads with single bodies? Quadrupeds with serpents' tails, and fish with quadrupeds' faces, and here an animal who seems a horse in front and a ram behind, and there a horse with horns, and so on; by now it is more pleasurable for a monk to read marble than manuscript, and to admire the works of man than to meditate on the law of God. Shame! For the desire of your eyes and for your smiles! ~ Umberto Eco

I suspect that there is no serious scholar who doesn't like to watch television. I'm just the only one who confesses ~ Umberto Eco

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. ~ Umberto Eco

Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure. ~ Umberto Eco

Oh, what a harmony of abandonment and impulse, of unnatural and yet graceful postures, in that mystical language of limbs miraculously freed from the weight of corporeal matter, marked quantity infused with new substantial form, as if the holy band were struck by an impetuous wind, breath of life, frenzy of delight, rejoicing song of praise miraculously transformed, from the sound that it was, into image. ~ Umberto Eco

Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness. ~ Umberto Eco

The person who doesn't read lives only one life. The reader lives 5,000. Reading is immortality backwards. ~ Umberto Eco

Dostoevsky was writing about losers. The main character of The Iliad, Hector, is a loser. It's very boring to talk about winners. The real literature always talks about losers. Madame Bovary is a loser. Julien Sorel is a loser. I am doing only the same job. Losers are more fascinating. Winners are stupid … because usually they win by chance ~ Umberto Eco

It's hopeless," he went on. "We no longer have the learning of the ancients, the age of giants is past!"
"We are dwarfs," William admitted, "but dwarfs who stand on the shoulders of those giants, and small though we are, we sometimes manage to see farther on the horizon than they. ~ Umberto Eco

when the soul is transported, the only virtue lies in loving what you see (is that not true?), the supreme happiness in having what you have; ~ Umberto Eco

Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for. ~ Umberto Eco

I was a fervent Catholic, and I belonged to the national organizations, even becoming one of the national leaders, until the age of 21, 22. ~ Umberto Eco