Umberto Eco

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

"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."

"We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

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

"A sign is anything which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity."

"The more power a Jahwist ascribes to God, the more he has to explain why God allows evil. The Gnostic said, 'God is not all-powerful, but he is good.' That solves the problem."

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

"The impossible is what nobody can do until somebody does it."

"Architecture is a political act."

"Every reader as he reads is thus a reader of himself."

"Beauty is a sign of intelligence."

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand."

"The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art."

"A masterpiece is a work of imagination by which the human spirit expresses itself."

"I prefer reading to talking. And since talk is the only polite form of interruption, silence gathers all the glory of conversation."

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

"Texts are secret labyrinths of meaning."

"We think of ourselves as information processors, but we are really pattern recognizers."

"The more you have, the more you are occupied. The less you have, the more free you are."

"Narrative is a kind of play that children do by themselves."

"In the Middle Ages there were all kinds of things happening in terms of culture and graphics and art and science and kind of the preservation of knowledge."

"To say that something is true is to say that it is not false."

"Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength."

"The interpretation of data is the starting point for understanding."

"Suicide is the worst possible thing someone can do to themselves."

"Cultures are not unified entities but fragmented and multifaceted."

"The world cannot be understood without numbers."

"I think of myself as someone who can describe things."

"Communication is not just the transmission of information, but a process of meaning-making."

"The labyrinth is a metaphor for life itself."