Umberto Eco quotes - page 6

Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. (Umberto Eco)
Scholem ... says that Jewish mystics have always tried to project their own thought into the biblical texts; as a matter of fact, every unexpressible reading of a symbolic machinery depends on such a projective attitude. View quote
Umberto Eco
The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. View quote
Umberto Eco
A general semiotics studies the whole of the human signifying activity - languages - and languages are what constitutes human beings as such, that is, as semiotic animals. It studies and describes languages through languages. View quote
Umberto Eco
The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values. View quote
Umberto Eco
These systems can be studied from a syntactic, a semantic, or a pragmatic point of view. View quote
Umberto Eco
To see human beings as signifying animals - even outside the practice of verbal language - and to see that their ability to produce and to interpret signs, as well as their ability to draw inferences, is rooted in the same cognitive structures, represent a way to give form to our experience. View quote
Umberto Eco
Good or bad are theoretical stipulations according to which, by a philosophical decision, many scattered instances of the most different facts or acts become the same thing. View quote
Umberto Eco
For the Kabalist, the fact that God expresses Himself, even though His utterances are beyond any human insight, is more important than any specific and coded meaning His words can convey. View quote
Umberto Eco
People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction. View quote
Umberto Eco
Beauty is boring because it is predictable. (Umberto Eco)
I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it. View quote
Umberto Eco
Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that. View quote
Umberto Eco
It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion. View quote
Umberto Eco
Perhaps I am not as wise as I like to think I am. View quote
Umberto Eco
Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state. View quote
Umberto Eco
When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love. View quote
Umberto Eco
After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs. View quote
Umberto Eco
One can be a great poet and be politically stupid. View quote
Umberto Eco
The court jester had the right to say the most outrageous things to the king. Everything was permitted during carnival, even the songs that the Roman legionnaires would sing, calling Julius Caesar 'queen,' alluding, in a very transparent way, to his real, or presumed, homosexual escapades. View quote
Umberto Eco
I was a fervent Catholic, and I belonged to the national organizations, even becoming one of the national leaders, until the age of 21, 22. (Umberto Eco)
I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels. View quote
Umberto Eco
Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking. View quote
Umberto Eco
It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things. View quote
Umberto Eco
I could work in the shower if I had plastic paper. View quote
Umberto Eco