Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum 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.

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.

Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.

How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon.

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.

Not bad, not bad at all, " Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.

From shit, thus, I extract pure Shinola

…the more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn’t matter if things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.

It’s quite possible that mortality is simply the result of poor education.

The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them.

How clear everything becomes when you look from the darkness of a dungeon!

It [Foucault's Pendulum] can be very comforting for people of my generation, who ate disappointment for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

But chance has a taste for conspiracy.