Umberto Eco Quotes: Show not what has been done, but what…

Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.

("The Name of the Rose")

More Quotes from Umberto Eco:

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.
Umberto Eco

In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.
Umberto Eco

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.
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

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.
Umberto Eco

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.
Umberto Eco

Browse All: Umberto Eco Quotations

Readers Who Like This Quotation Also Like:

Based on Topics: World Quotes

Based on Keywords: labyrinths

On the other hand, it is not fair to say that changes in federal policy have caused our tuition to rise faster. Every economic argument imaginable would indicate that we should raise tuition at a faster rate than we do.
Charles Vest

There's something Vichy about the French.
Ivor Novello

Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there's nothing exactly like it.
W. C. Fields