Umberto Eco

“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”

“Fear prophets, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.”

“The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.”

“Translation is the art of failure.”

“The beauty of the universe consists not only of unity in variety, but also of variety in unity.”

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.”

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”

“We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.”

“I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”

“To survive, you must tell stories.”

“Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known: books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.”

“A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.”

“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie.”

“The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible.”

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

“Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.”

“What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing.”

“The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things.”