823 Quotes by Umberto Eco

The book has to give the idea of another kind of newspaper, has to show how I labored away for a year to create a model of journalism independent of all pressure, implying that the venture failed because it was impossible to have a free voice.

I’ve always said that I learned the English I know through two sources – Marvel Comics and Finnegans Wake.

Yesterday’s rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.

There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.

That is a real attitude – to see everything as being meaningful, even the less important things, to prove something, even the greater problems of life.

If culture did not filter, it would be inane – as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.

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.

A library’s ideal function is to be a little bit like a bouquiniste’s stall, a place for trouvailles.

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