Umberto Eco citáty

strana 4

„Filozofie má praktickou sílu: přispívá ke změně světa.“

„Věřím, že to, čím se staneme, závisí na tom, co nás naši otcové naučí ve chvílích, kdy se nás nesnaží nic naučit. Formují nás malé střípky moudrosti.“

„Skutečný hrdina se stal hrdinou omylem; přitom vždy snil o tom, být skutečným zbabělcem, jakými jsou všichni ostatní.“

„Odhalené tajemství nemůže přinést nic než zklamání.“

„Člověk se vždycky narodí ve špatném znamení a prožít svůj život důstojně znamená vlastně den po dni korigovat vlastní horoskop.“

„Kolik myslí zkažených, jako je tvoje, by však z této knihy vytěžilo extrémní závěr, že ve smíchu spočívá dokonalost člověka! Smích zbaví na chvíli sedláka strachu. Zákon však nabývá platnosti pomocí strachu, jehož pravé jméno je bohabojnost.“

„"Kniha je jako lžíce, kladivo, kolo nebo nůžky. Jakmile jste je jednou vynalezli, už to lépe udělat nemůžete".“

„Jistě, jenže ten filosof taky říkal, že se přitom otáčí hladiny moří a kůra na povrchu naší planety, zatímco střed, co je hluboko uvnitř, se ani nehne. Mám aspoň ten dojem." "To ještě hloupější je. Kde to ten pán napsal?" "To nevím, myslím, že to nakonec ani nenapsal, nebo nevydal jako knihu. Má moc rád jezuity a nechtěl si je rozhněvat." "Tak to já radši pana Galilea mám, on kacířské myšlenky choval, ale vyznal se z nich předobrotivým kardinálům a nikdo ho neupálil. Zato se mi nelíbí ten tvůj druhý pán, co ještě kacířštější myšlenky chová a nevyzpovídá se z nich ani svým přátelům jezuitům. Galileovi Bůh jednou odpustí, jemu ale ne.“

„Proč by měl člověk žít, kdyby všechno bylo opravdu tak, jak se to jeví?“

„Lidé se nikdy nedopouštějí zla tak dokonale a s takovým nadšením, jako když to dělají z náboženského přesvědčení.“

„… jestli to napadlo mě, určitě už na to přišel už někdo přede mnou.“

„Vesmír musel být vadný od samého počátku…“

„Je-li pravý nepřítel příliš silný, je třeba najít si slabšího.“

„Člověk všechno pochopí, když už nestojí za to něco chápat.“

„… snaž se být radši s těmi, kdo pocity vyvolávají, než s těmi, kdo jim podléhají…“

„Vždycky musíme někoho nenávidět, abychom se cítili vykoupení ze své bídy. Pražský hřbitov.“

„Styk s Božstvem nesmí trvat dlouhou, jinak člověk přijde o rozum.“

„Někdejší růže je tu už jen co jméno, jen pouhá jména držíme ve své moci“

„Kdo nemá mravní zásady, obvykle se zahalí do praporu, a parchanti se vždycky dovolávají čistoty své rasy.“

„Je možné, aby člověk byl zbabělý jen proto, že odvaha ostatních mu připadá neúměrná ve srovnání s bezvýznamností toho, co se děje? Pak by ale moudrost vedla ke zbabělosti…“

„Pes rozlišuje přátelskou bytost od nepřátelské výlučně na základě skutečnosti, že jednu zná, a druhou ne.“

„Už jsem se začal chovat jako člověk, po kterém jdou - zatím jen hodiny tím, jak na nich naskakují nové a nové číslice…“

„Tvá moc je však tak velká, že si můžeš dovolit být hodný…“

„Proč je třeba dokazovat něco, co nemůže být jinak než je?“

„Pochopil jsem. V jistotě, že tu není nic, co by se dalo pochopit, by měl být můj klid a můj triumf.“

„Hlouposti bily ze všeho nejvíc do očí tím, že se daly jen těžko vysvětlit, budily dojem, že jde o záhady…“

„… Zkrátka obáváš-li se komplotu, sám si ho zorganizuj a budeš mít pod palcem všechny, kteří by se jej mohli zúčastnit…“

„… všechno se opakuje v kruhu, historie je učitelka, protože nás učí, že vlastně neexistuje…“

„… Pravdu měl Proust: živod vyjadřuje líp odrhovačka než Missa Solemnis. Umění si z nás utahuje, poskytuje nám pocit bezpečí, ukazuje nám svět takový, jakým by ho umělci chtěli mít. Škvár předstírá, že to nemyslí vážně, a přitom nám ten svět ukazuje takový, jaký opravdu je nebo aspoň bude…“

„… K čemu by pak byla ta dřina, na jakou člověka přijde rozumné chování?“

„Jediným živočichem, který se stáčí do kruhu je had, a proto je kolem něho tolik mýtů a kultů.“

“This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.”

“Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.”

“Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.”

“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.”

“Translation is the art of failure.”

“I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but
we don't recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it.”

“A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what the temptation of adultery is for laymen and the yearning for riches is for secular ecclesiastics, the seduction of knowledge is for monks.”

“We've got to help each other, seeing as God doesn't help us. Do you see how great Jesus' idea was? Imagine how much it must have irritated God. Forget the devil, Jesus was the only true enemy of God, and he's the only friend us poor wretches have.”

“The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came.”

“There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.”

“How should we deal with intrusions of fiction into life, now that we have seen the historical impact that this phenomenon can have? … Reflecting on these complex relationships between reader and story, fiction and life, can constitute a form of therapy against the sleep of reason, which generates monsters.”

“I started to write [The Name of the Rose] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk.”

“In short, to remember is to reconstruct in part on the basis of what we have learned or said since. That's normal, that's how we remember. I tell you this to encourage you to reactivate some of these profiles of excitation, instead of simply digging obsessively in an effort to find something that's already there, as shiny and new as you imagine it was when you first set it aside … Remembering is a labor, not a luxury.”

“A sack," Baudolino explained, like a man who knows a trade well, "is like a grape harvest: you have to divide the tasks. There are those who press the grapes, those who carry off the must in the tuns, those who cook for others, others who go to fetch the good wine from last year…. a sack is a serious job,”

“To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.”

“There, Master Niketas," Baudolino said, "when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. … There is nothing better than imagining other worlds," he said, "to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn't yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.”

“In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty.”

“I don't miss my youth. I'm glad I had one, but I wouldn't like to start over.”

“The language of Europe is translation.”

“The hand of God creates; it does not conceal.”

“That man is … odd," I dared say to William.
"He is, or has been, in many ways a great man. But for this very reason he is odd. It is only petty men who seem normal.”

“The Poet had, who had made a show of attaching no importance to this literary game (though it gnawed at his heart that he himself had not written such beautiful letters, provoking replies even more beautiful), and having no one with whom to fall in love, had fallen in love with the letters themselves — which, as Niketas remarked with a smile — was not surprising, since in youth we are prone to fall in love with love.”

“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 emperor of the Latins — who hasn't been a Latin himself since the days of Charlemagne — is the successor of the Roman emperors — the ones of Rome, I mean, not those of Constantinople. But to make sure he's emperor, he has to be crowned by the pope, because the law of Christ has swept away the false law, the law of liars. To be crowned by the pope, the emperor also has to be recognized by the cities of Italy, and each of them kind of goes his own way, so he has to be crowned king of Italy — provided, naturally, that the Teutonic princes have elected him. Is that clear?”

“There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but towards hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.”

“In this world you either read or write, and writers write out of contempt for their colleagues, out of a desire to have something good to read once in a while.”

“After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopaedia.”

“I am mimetic. If I write a book set in the seventeenth century, I write in a Baroque style. If I’m writing a book set in a newspaper office, I write in Journalese.”

“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.”