People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.

It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.

It feels like forever, like he's lived through the same things as me, like our lives ran parallel for years until last week, when they finally intersected and fused.

while it’s five in the morning here, it’s also five in the evening somewhere in China—proving that incompatible truths make perfect sense when seen with global perspective.

Let us work as if success depended upon ourselves alone but with heartfelt conviction that we are doing nothing and God everything.

The Internet is ultimately about innovation and integration, but you don't get the innovation unless you integrate Web technology into the processes by which you run your business.

I've had my run in with trouble. Fortunately, you know, one slap on the hand is usually the last time for me... I learned my lesson.

Did you think I was immortal?

Why is the human skull as dense as it is? Nowadays we can send a message around the world in one-seventh of a second, but it takes years to drive an idea through a quarter-inch of human skull.

It is the quality and the character of the leader that determines the results and performance.

Single men and determined groups have been the only makers of space in which man could walk free.

Do a few things at mastery versus many things at mediocrity.