Umberto Eco Quotes

• I enjoyed your article, but I preferred my own.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

• People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Religion

• I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Books, Reading

• We live for books.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Books, Reading

• 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…

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Books

• Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known: books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Books

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fragile, Suffers, Clumsy, Creature, Books

• 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

  Topics in Fear, Religion, Truth

  Tags in Prophecy, Prophets, Die

• I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Writing

• We like lists because we don’t want to die.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Die

• But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don’t. Don’t evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Country

  Tags in Intellectual

• As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Philosophy

• After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Practice

• Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Creativity

• But now 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Believe

• As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Books

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Birth

•  

  My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn’t visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books.

   

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Influence, Life

• Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.

  Umberto Eco

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Every, Goes

Umberto Eco (49)

Birth:	5th January, 1932
Nationality:	Italian
Profession:	Essayist, Novelist, Philosopher

About

Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. He is best known for his groundbreaking 1980 novel Il nome della rosa, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory.

Related Authors

• José Enrique Rodó
• Bernard Keble Sandwell
• Penelope Fitzgerald
• Charles Peguy
• Ana Castillo
• Eugene Field
• Llewelyn Powys
• Tahar Ben Jelloun
• Mary Kay Blakely
• Richard Critchfield

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 28th October

Births

• 1967 - Julia Roberts
• 1955 - Bill Gates
• 1972 - Terrell Davis
• 1980 - Alan Smith
• 1932 - Suzy Parker

Deaths

• 1890 - Alexander John Ellis
• 2006 - Red Auerbach
• 1818 - Abigail Adams
• 1900 - Max Muller
• 1996 - Morey Amsterdam