Umberto Eco Quotes

Author Image

Umberto Eco

Profession : Novelist

Birth : January 5, 1932

Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, 'How are you, you old scoundrel!' clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.

Umberto Eco

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

Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.

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 way round.

Umberto Eco

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Umberto Eco

There are books on our shelves we haven't read and doubtless never will, that each of us has probably put to one side in the belief that we will read them later on, perhaps even in another life.

Umberto Eco

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

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

Umberto Eco

Translation is the art of failure.

Umberto Eco

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

Beauty is boring because it is predictable.

Umberto Eco

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

Umberto Eco

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

Umberto Eco

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

Umberto Eco

We invented the car, and it made it easier for us to crash and die. If I gave a car to my grandfather, he would die in five minutes, while I have grown up slowly to accept speed.

Umberto Eco

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

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

What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.

Umberto Eco

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.

Umberto Eco

The function of memory is not only to preserve, but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick.

Umberto Eco