Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

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.

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

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.

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

The law, instead of cleansing the heart from sin, doth revive it, put strength into, and increase it in the soul, even as it doth discover and forbid it, for it doth not give power to subdue.

Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.

It was only in the early 1990s - during my student years as an aspiring scientist at Delhi University - that I discovered the world of cinema.

How will I be remembered by my children? This is the true measure of a man.

I want to be the guy out there on the edge.

One learns to itch where one can scratch.

The universality of tattooing is a curious subject for speculation.

I don't think the audience always listens to the critics. That's been proven time and time again.

LA people are more laid back about certain things.

You won't get hurt skiing if you don't fall.