Umberto Eco Quotes
Umberto Eco was an Italian philosopher, semiotician, novelist, and one of the most widely read public intellectuals of his time. A Theory of Semiotics and The Role of the Reader laid out the systematic philosophical foundations of his semiotics, in which the open work invites the reader as co-producer of meaning, while The Limits of Interpretation defended a textual rationality against the unconstrained drift of post-structural reading. The quotes below are attributed to Umberto Eco, organized by topic.
Umberto Eco on Death
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Attributed to Umberto Eco:
“We like lists because we do not want to die.”
Umberto Eco on Happiness
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“The basic principle [of hermetic drift semiotics] is not only that the similar can be known through the similar but also that from similarity to similarity everything can be connected with everything else, so that everything can be in turn either the expression or the content of any other thing.”
U. Eco (1990), The limits of Intepretation , as quoted in Thomas A. Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok (2020), The Semiotic Web 1991: Biosemiotics .
Umberto Eco on Knowledge
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Attributed to Umberto Eco:
“Every text is a lazy machine asking the reader to do part of its work.”
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Attributed to Umberto Eco:
“The list is the origin of culture.”
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“Il costume di casa (1973); as translated in Travels in Hyperreality (1986)”
Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev , the editors of Pravda , Izvestiia , the -
“Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [ A Theory of Semiotics ] (1976)”
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie . If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth : it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all. -
“U. Eco (1990), The limits of Intepretation , as quoted in Thomas A. Sebeok, Jean Umiker-Sebeok (2020), The Semiotic Web 1991: Biosemiotics .”
The basic principle [of hermetic drift semiotics] is not only that the similar can be known through the similar but also that from similarity to similarity everything can be connected with everything else, so that everything can be in turn either the expression or the content of any other thing. -
“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 .”
Can Television Teach?" in Screen Education 31 (1979), p. 12 -
“Can Television Teach?" in Screen Education 31 (1979), p. 12”
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 . -
“The Role of the Reader : Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979), Part 1: Open, Ch. 1 : The Poetics of the Open Work, endnote 9, p. 66; later published amidst extended and developed translations of Opera aperta (1962), in The Open Work (1989) as translated by Anna Cancogni, Ch. 1 : The Poetics of the Open Work, endnote 9, p. 251”
Epistemological thinkers connected with quantum methodology have rightly warned against an ingenuous transposition of physical categories into the fields of ethics and psychology (for example. the identification of indeterminacy with moral freedom ). Hence, it would not be justified to understand my formulation as making an analogy between the structures of the work of art and the supposed structu
Umberto Eco on Politics
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“Not long ago, if you wanted to seize political power in a country you had merely to control the army and the police. Today it is only in the most backward countries that fascist generals, in carrying out a coup d'état, still use tanks. If a country has reached a high degree of industrialization the whole scene changes. The day after the fall of Khrushchev , the editors of Pravda , Izvestiia , the heads of the radio and television were replaced; the army wasn't called out. Today a country belongs to the person who controls communications .”
Il costume di casa (1973); as translated in Travels in Hyperreality (1986)
Umberto Eco on Truth
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Attributed to Umberto Eco:
“Translation is the art of failure.”
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Attributed to Umberto Eco:
“There are limits to interpretation, and they are inscribed in the text itself.”
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“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie . If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth : it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.”
Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [ A Theory of Semiotics ] (1976) | Variant: A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie. -
“Variant: A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.”
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie . If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth : it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.