The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.
~ Umberto Eco
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A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.
~ Umberto Eco
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People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.
~ Umberto Eco
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Fear prophets, Adso, 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.
~ Umberto Eco
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It was in this phoney guise that Donald Trump won the election in 2016; installed in Washington, he nationalised The Apprentice’s cut-throat scenario by stoking social and ideological feuds, then sat back to enjoy the mayhem that ensued.
~ Peter Conrad via The Guardian
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What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?
~ Umberto Eco
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It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
~ Umberto Eco
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A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.
~ Umberto Eco
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Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.
~ Umberto Eco
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The person who doesn’t read lives only one life. The reader lives 5,000. Reading is immortality backwards.
~ Umberto Eco
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