Umberto Eco

Famous quotes by Umberto Eco:

"Translation is the art of failure."

"If two things don't fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that's credulity"

"When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything."

"The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb."

"Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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.''"

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

Latest News for: Umberto eco

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Republicans fell down their own conspiracy theory rabbit hole

MSNBC 11 Apr 2024

In Umberto Eco's classic novel "Foucault's Pendulum," a group of friends develop a ridiculous conspiracy theory as a game, only to start believing it themselves, with horrible consequences for everyone involved ... .

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A library of all libraries

Daily Sabah 12 Mar 2024

Italian writer Umberto Eco once remarked that when we say “I,” we mean “memory,” and this memory is nothing but a means of a library. Today, one might wonder whether libraries stan ....

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World Book Club - BBC Podcast

Learn Out Loud 04 Mar 2024

Join the World Book Club and listen to the globe’s great authors discuss their best known works of literature ... Here are some of the literary superstars that have been interviewed. ... Jonathan Franzen on Freedom ... Umberto Eco on The Name of the Rose ... V.S.

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10 Fascinating Glimpses into Medieval Crime Investigation

ListVerse 13 Feb 2024

Ever since the publication of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a murder mystery ...

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It was expensive and underpowered, but the Apple Macintosh still changed the world

The Observer 28 Jan 2024

Forty years ago this week, on 22 January 1984, a stunning advertising video was screened during the Super Bowl broadcast in the US ... This led Umberto Eco, in a memorable essay, to argue that the Macintosh is Catholic and the PC is Protestant ... .

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War, Peace, and Possible Futures: George Saunders on Storytelling the World’s Fate and the Antidote ...

Brainpickings 24 Jan 2024

“War is large-scale murder, us at our worst, the stupidest guy doing the cruelest thing to the weakest being.” ... He writes. ... Art from The Three Astronauts — Umberto Eco’s vintage semiotic children’s book about world peace ... .

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Roots: Reconnecting with the Mother Continent, by The Crew

The Unz Review 20 Jan 2024

Many of us no longer have living connections in Europe ... Remember ... Mountain Climbing as Metaphor for the Spiritual Quest, by Julius Evola (1974) The Name of the Rose; The Island of the Day Before; The Prague Cemetery, by Umberto Eco (1980, 1994, 2011).

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Review: Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko’s ‘Chornobyldorf’ Burns Bright at the Prototype Festival

New York Observer 17 Jan 2024

Illia Razumeiko and Roman Grygoriv’s company, Opera Aperta, is named for a term coined by Umberto Eco in 1962 meaning “open work.” The postmodern concept refers to there being multiple meanings in ...

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Pete Doherty’s son Astile announces gig as Liam Gallagher tribute act

NME 05 Jan 2024

Pete Doherty’s son Astile has announced that he is going to debut his tribute act to Liam Gallagher tonight (January 5). READ MORE ... It’s nasty.” ... He continued ... “I subscribe to the Umberto Eco view that Noel Gallagher’s a poet and Liam’s a town crier.” . .

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This Day in History - January 5

Jamaica Observer 05 Jan 2024

... playwright and novelist (1921-1990); Robert Duvall, US actor (1931- ); Umberto Eco, Italian writer (1932-2016); Charlie Rose, US talk show host/journalist (1942- ); Diane Keaton, US actress (1946- ).

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Rock

The Daily Mail 05 Jan 2024

Astile Doherty has launched a career as a tribute act to Liam Gallagher ... His reference to Italian medieval historian and philosopher Umberto Eco was particularly surprising to the tickled interviewer who requested he repeat himself ... Yeah, she's mine.'.

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Were the monks on drugs? How The Book of Kells went fully psychedelic

The Observer 04 Jan 2024

Now that waywardness has gone immersive ... Photograph ... Photograph ... In Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a fundamentalist attempts to censor and control the artistic excesses and free imaginations of scribes and illuminators in a 14th-century monastery ... .

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Surreality, Propaganda, and Wile E. Coyote

WhoWhatWhy 13 Dec 2023

As he puts it, ... And sometimes it can be pleasantly mindblowing to discover when those unconscious assumptions are wrong ... OPINION ... Photo credit. ... Wile E ... Look down ... Why do we seem to inch towards what Umberto Eco called Ur-Fascism no matter whom we elect? ... .

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Truth lies in the eyes of beholder–Post-truth, Pre-truth, Self-deception and Public domain

The Siasat Daily 08 Dec 2023

In his seminal essay The Force of False (2000), Umberto Eco diligently spells out three constitutive elements of falsities ... Umberto Eco. Claudio Paolucci, the celebrated disciple of Umberto Eco, ...

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167 Documentaries Enter Oscars Doc Race – See the Full List

The Wrap 04 Dec 2023

Voters in the Academy’s Documentary Branch will have 167 feature films and 114 shorts to consider for this year’s Oscars, according to emails sent to the branch over the past four months ... The second batch of 19 titles was added on Sept ... “Umberto Eco ... .