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 Name of the Rose")
More Quotes from Umberto Eco:
'Sir,' Saint-Savin replied, 'the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life. We should rather aspire to a heaven where only the planets live in eternal bliss, receiving neither rewards nor condemnations, but enjoying merely their own eternal motion in the arms of the void.'Umberto Eco
What we honor as prudence in our elders is simply panic in action.
Umberto Eco
'I have never doubted the truth of signs, Adso they are the only things man has with which to orient himself in the world. What I did not understand is the relation among signs.... I behaved stubbornly, pursuing a semblance of order, when I should have known well that there is no order in the universe.' 'But in imagining an erroneous order you still found something....' 'What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.... The only truths that are useful are instruments to be thrown away.'
Umberto Eco
After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?
Umberto Eco
There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.
Umberto Eco
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