More Quotes by Umberto Eco
Given that there are seven billion people living on this earth, there is a consistent quantity of imbecile or idiot, okay. Previously, these people could express themselves only with their friends or at the bar after two or three glasses of something, and they said every silliness, and people laughed. Now they have the possibility to show up on the internet. And so, on the internet, along with the messages of a lot of interesting and important people - even the Pope is writing on Twitter - we have a great quantity of idiots.
When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.
Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.
To survive, you must tell stories.
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.
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.
Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.
What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?
Love is wiser than wisdom.
