Whoever reflects on four things I would be better if he were never born: that which is above, that which is below, that which is before, that which is after.
("Foucault's Pendulum")
More Quotes from Umberto Eco:
How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.Umberto Eco
But now 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.
Umberto Eco
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...
Umberto Eco
True learning must not be content with ideas, which are, in fact, signs, but must discover things in their individual truth.
Umberto Eco
Today I realize that many recent exercises in 'deconstructive reading' read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity.
Umberto Eco
The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, ''I love you madly,'' because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, ''As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.''
Umberto Eco
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