Umberto Eco

"Every war is fought twice, once on the field and once in the sign systems of culture."

"I believe in the predictability of human behavior."

"The real to me is not better than the imaginary. Both are real in different ways."

"Authority is not a quality one assumes, but an act one commits."

"In order to understand, I must translate."

"Silence is also a form of communication."

"The poet does not fear death, for death is already within his words."

"Narrative structures are everywhere; we cannot escape storytelling."

"To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible."

"The past is not dead; it is not even past."

"Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign."

"A text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning but a multidimensional space."

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that very existence is an act of rebellion."

"We make up signs and then we become enslaved by them."

"Reading is a vice that has been construed as a virtue."

"The forest of symbols is not a place to get lost but a place to find yourself."

"Every document is a monument; every text is a battlefield."

"Irony is the hygiene of the mind."

"The difference between a list of things and a narrative is that narrative demands a causal connection."

"Culture is not what you know; it is what you know about what you know."

"The open text is not a text; it is a process of becoming."

"The greatest magic is that which we do not recognize as magic."

"Signs are the very fabric of human consciousness."

"To understand the world, you must understand how it is encoded."

"The detective story is a game in which the reader and author are accomplices."

"Art is the language of the ineffable."

"Time is not a line but a labyrinth."

"The mask reveals more than the face."

"In the beginning there was the word, and the word was a sign."

"Patience is not passivity; it is active waiting."