823 Quotes by Umberto Eco

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

Books always speak of other books.

A secret is powerful when it is empty. People often mention the "Masonic secret." What on earth is the Masonic secret? No one can tell. As long as it remains empty it can be filled up with every possible notion, and it has power.

The photograph [of Che Guevara], for a civilization now accustomed to thinking in images, was not the description of a single event... it was an argument.

The only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.

I was the type who looked at discussions of What Is Truth only with a view toward correcting the manuscript. If you were to quote "I am that I am," for example, I thought that the fundamental problem was where to put the comma, inside the quotation marks or outside.

If people buy my books for vanity, I consider it a tax on idiocy.

Love is wiser than wisdom.

Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.