KB > KB's Quotes

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“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, Foucault’s Pendulum

“There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics…Cretins don’t even talk; they sort of slobber and stumble…Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation…Fools don’t claim that cats bark, but they talk about cats when everyone else is talking about dogs. They offend all the rules of conversation, and when they really offend, they’re magnificent…Morons never do the wrong thing. They get their reasoning wrong. Like the fellow who says that all dogs are pets and all dogs bark, and cats are pets, too, therefore cats bark…Morons will occasionally say something that’s right, but they say it for the wrong reason…A lunatic is easily recognized. He is a moron who doesn’t know the ropes. The moron proves his thesis; he has logic, however twisted it may be. The lunatic on the other hand, doesn’t concern himself at all with logic; he works by short circuits. For him, everything proves everything else. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars…There are lunatics who don’t bring up the Templars, but those who do are the most insidious. At first they seem normal, then all of a sudden…”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“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, Foucault’s Pendulum

“The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“But if there is no cosmic Plan? What a mockery, to live in exile when no one sent you there. Exile from a place, moreover, that does not exist.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“You live on the surface," Lia told me years later. "You sometimes seem profound, but it's only because you piece a lot of surfaces together to create the impression of depth, solidity. That solidity would collapse if you try to stand it up.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn't exist. It's the permutations that matter.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“The belief that time is a linear, directed sequence running from A to B is a modern illusion. In fact, it can also go from B to A, the effect producing the cause.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

“Can you call yourself a coward simply because the courage of others seems to you out of proportion to the triviality of the occasion?”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another; you cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“Superstition brings bad luck.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“Counterfactual conditionals are always true, because the premise is false. But I was there that day, so now I am where I am.”
― Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

“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, The Name of the Rose

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”
― Umberto Eco, Travels in Hyperreality

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco

“It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By "we" I mean adults. We're adults, right? But emotionally we're a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: "Would someone please acknowledge me?”
― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal