Umberto Eco

(Born 1932) Italian philosopher and novelist.

• "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."
  • From A Theory of Semiotics, 1975
  • Variation: "A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie."

• "Wanting connections, we found connections — always, everywhere, and between everything. The world exploded in a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else ..."
  • From Foucault's Pendulum, 1988

Attributed

• "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."[1]

• "Because I felt like killing a Monk" (When asked why he wrote The Name of the Rose )