823 Quotes by Umberto Eco

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

You tell me these two were my parents, so now I know but it’s a memory that you’ve given me. I’ll remember the photo from now on, but not them.

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.

The step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief.

Often the object of a desire, when desire is transformed into hope, becomes more real than reality itself.

For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep. Hence the Jews. Divine providence has given them to us, and so, by God, let us use them, and pray there’s always some Jew to fear and to hate. We need an enemy to give people hope.

The most interesting letters I received about ‘The Name of the Rose’ were from people in the Midwest that maybe didn’t understand exactly, but wanted to understand more and who were excited by this picture of a world which was not their own.

And from this springs the extraordinary question: Did the Egyptians know about electricity?

Homer’s work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.