More Quotes by Umberto Eco
Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.
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.
A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.
Every great thinker is someone else's moron.
Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes.... Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications.
If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.
Originality and creativity are nothing but the result of the wise management of combinations. The creative genius combines more rapidly, and with a greater critical sense of what gets tossed out and what gets saved, the same material that the failed genius has to work with.
There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.
Love is wiser than wisdom.
