823 Quotes by Umberto Eco

..the advent of television… destroyed the linear universe of mechanical civilization, inspired by the Gutenbergian model, reestablishing a sort of tribal unity, like a primitive village.

[B]ut newspapers nowadays had too many pages, no one could proof everything before it went to press, and even the major newspapers were now writing “Simone de Beauvoire,” or “Beaudelaire,” or “Roosvelt,” and the proofreader was becoming as outmoded as the Gutenberg press.

There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love merrily. You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor. On the other hand, I remember remarking one day in the corridors of the university that if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end up writing a lousy book like Materialism and Empiriocriticism.

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;

Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the state (attributed to James Jesus Angleton)

Vai via ora," mi disse in fretta, "ti ho detto quello che volevi sapere. Di qui il coro degli angeli, di là la gola dell'inferno.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produces no concept; therefore, it is dumb.

Symbol sometimes of the Devil,sometimes of the Risen Christ, no animal is more untrustworthy than the cock.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.