Top 400 Umberto Eco Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Creo que, a ciertas alturas, ya no hay diferencia entre acostumbrarse a fingir que se cree y acostumbrarse a creer.”

— Umberto Eco

152. “We know that sensory phenomena are transcribed in the photographic emulsion in such a way that even if there is a causal link with the real phenomena, the graphic images can be considered as wholly arbitrary with respect to these phenomena.”

— Umberto Eco

153. “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

154. “The Roseicrucians were everywhere, aided by the fact that they didn’t exist.”

— Umberto Eco

155. “It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.”

— Umberto Eco

156. “The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.”

— Umberto Eco

157. “To establish what is true is very difficult. Frequently it is easier to establish what is false. And, passing through the false, it’s possible to understand something about truth.”

— Umberto Eco

158. “In other words, although I don’t like them, we do need noble-spirited souls.”

— Umberto Eco

159. “Man’s principle trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absense of universal gullibility?”

— Umberto Eco

160. “Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.”

— Umberto Eco

161. “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

162. “I am a professor who writes novels on Sundays.”

— Umberto Eco

163. “How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn’t have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see.”

— Umberto Eco

164. “Omnia mundi creatura quasi liber et pictura nobis est in speculum.”

— Umberto Eco

165. “The Templars realized that the secret lay not only in possessing the global map of the currents, but also in knowing the critical point, the Omphalos, the Umbilicus Telluris, the Navel of the World, the Source of Command.”

— Umberto Eco

166. “What does the philosopher say? Odi ergo sum. I hate therefore I am.”

— Umberto Eco

167. “If the eye could see the demons that people the universe, existence would be impossible. – Talmud, Berakhot, 6.”

— Umberto Eco

168. “I am not on Facebook and on Twitter because the purpose of my life is to avoid messages. I receive too many messages from the world, and so I try to avoid that.”

— Umberto Eco

169. “In this universe of ours, with its wealth of errors and legends, historical data and false information, one absolute truth is the fact that Superman is Clark Kent. All the rest is always open to debate.”

— Umberto Eco

170. “But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery.”

— Umberto Eco

171. “Having reached the end of my poor sinner’s life, my hair now white, I grow old as the world does, waiting to be lost in the bottomless pit of silent and deserted divinity, sharing in the light of angelic intelligences;.”

— Umberto Eco

172. “Is it possible to say “It was a beautiful morning at the end of November” without feeling like Snoopy?”

— Umberto Eco

173. “The “thesis neurosis” has begun: the student abandons the thesis, returns to it, feels unfulfilled, loses focus, and uses his thesis as an alibi to avoid other challenges in his life that he is too cowardly to address. This student will never graduate.”

— Umberto Eco

174. “I’m always fascinated by losers. Also, in my “Foucault’s Pendulum,” the main characters, who are in a way losers, they are more interesting than the winners.”

— Umberto Eco

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

— Umberto Eco

176. “Hitler’s one genuine obsession was the underground currents. He believed in the theory of the hollow earth, Hohlweltlehre.”

— Umberto Eco

177. “Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used “to tell” at all.”

— Umberto Eco

178. “I have a good memory. But I would be interested in memory even if I had a bad memory, because I believe that memory is our soul. If we lose our memory completely, we are without a soul.”

— Umberto Eco

179. “If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you’re an idiot.”

— Umberto Eco

180. “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

181. “During the day you will approach the frog several times and will utter words of worship. And you will ask it to work the miracles you wish... Meanwhile you will cut a cross on which to sacrifice it. – From a ritual of Aleister Crowley.”

— Umberto Eco

182. “It’s not the news that makes the newspaper, but the newspaper that makes the news.”

— Umberto Eco

183. “A sure sign of a lunatic is that sooner or later, he brings up the Templars.”

— Umberto Eco

184. “There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we haven’t read, that we haven’t had the time to read.”

— Umberto Eco

185. “If a shepherd errs, he must be isolated from other shepherds, but woe unto us if the sheep begin to distrust shepherds.”

— Umberto Eco

186. “We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

— Umberto Eco

187. “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

188. “The German lives in a state of perpetual intestinal embarrassment due to an excess of beer and the pork sausages on which he gorges himself.”

— Umberto Eco

189. “I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.”

— Umberto Eco

190. “The visitor enters and says, “What a lot of books! Have you read them all?”... The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: “And more, dear sir, many more,” which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: “No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office.”

— Umberto Eco

191. “Counterfactual conditionals are always true, because the premise is false. But I was there that day, so now I am where I am.”

— Umberto Eco

192. “If two things don’t fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that’s credulity.”

— Umberto Eco

193. “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

194. “Nebulat ergo cogito.”

— Umberto Eco

195. “For architecture, among all the arts, is the one that most boldly tries to reproduce in its rhythm the order of the universe, which the ancients called “kosmos,” that is to say ornate, since it is like a great animal on whom there shine the perfection and the proportion of all its members. And praised be our Creator who, as the Scriptures say, has decreed all things in number, weight, and measure.”

— Umberto Eco

196. “This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.”

— Umberto Eco

197. “To imagine secret societies and conspiracy is a way not to react to the social and political life. Because you say, “We don’t know who they are. We cannot react without reasoning.” So it is a way to keep people far from the political environment.”

— Umberto Eco

198. “I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.”

— Umberto Eco

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

— Umberto Eco

200. “Culture isn’t knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes.”

— Umberto Eco