823 Quotes by Umberto Eco

Then why do you want to know?" "Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.

I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.

My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.

[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.

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

He who falls in love in bars doesn't need a woman all his own. He can always find one on loan.

Every great thinker is someone else's moron.

We are never racist against somebody who is very far away. I don't know any racism against the Eskimos. To have a racist feeling, there must be an other who is slightly different from us - but is living close to us.

Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish!