Quotes by Umberto Eco

About Umberto Eco:

Umberto Eco is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He has since written further novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His most recent novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, was a best-seller.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.

Umberto Eco

Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary su...

Umberto Eco

... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.

Umberto Eco

The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.

Umberto Eco

The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them.

Umberto Eco

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Umberto Eco

How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.

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

Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything. Or he believes in one thing at a time. He believes a second thing only if it somehow follows from the first thing. He is nearsighted and met...

Umberto Eco

You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.

Umberto Eco

But this lump does not absolve me, because I got it through heedlessness, not though courage. I run my tongue over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no redemption.

Umberto Eco

From shit, thus, I extract pure Shinola

Umberto Eco

American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in p...

Umberto Eco

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

Umberto Eco

There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino said, ‘when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. There is nothing better than imagin...

Umberto Eco

Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other wa...

Umberto Eco

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

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

Translation is the art of failure.

Umberto Eco

Author Bio

  • NameUmberto Eco
  • DescriptionItalian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist
  • AliasesUmberto Ecco; Umberto Eccounstino
  • BornJanuary 5, 1932
  • CountryItaly
  • ProfessionPhilosopher; Writer; Novelist; Essayist; Educationist
  • AwardsOfficer Of The Legion Of Honour; Commandeur Des Arts Et Des Lettres?; Order Of Merit For Arts And Science; Austrian State Prize For European Literature; Grand Cross Of The Order Of Merit Of The Federal Republic Of Germany With Star; Princess Of Asturias Award - Communications And Humanities