823 Quotes by Umberto Eco

I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used “to tell” at all.

Those whom you cannot love you should, rather, fear.

Culture isn’t knowing when Napoleon died. Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes.

We’ve been led astray by rationalist thought,” Diotallevi said. “I keep telling you.

So Italy was invaded by these Fraticelli or Friars of the Poor Life, whom many considered dangerous. At this point it was difficult to distinguish the spiritual masters, who maintained contact with the ecclesiastical authorities, from their simpler followers, who now lived outside the order, begging for alms and existing from day to day by the labor of their hands, holding no property of any kind.

Naturally, everything depends on one’s background books and on what one is looking for.

I work for a publishing company. We deal with both lunatics and nonlunatics. After a while an editor can pick out the lunatics right away. If somebody brings up the Templars, he’s almost always a lunatic.

I don’t know, maybe we’re always looking for the right place, maybe it’s within reach, but we don’t recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it.