People
Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco photo

Umberto Eco Quotes

Total quotes: 2

Umberto Eco photo

Umberto Eco

Birthname

Birthday: January 5, 1932

Birthplace: Alessandria, Province of Alessandria, Italy

Death: February 19, 2016

Educated At: University Of Turin

Manner of Death: Natural Causes

Nationality: Italy

Occupations: Essayist, Professor, Educationist, Semiotician, Translator

Spouse: Renate Ramge

Total quotes: 2

“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.”

— Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum

Tagged: I Love You Dad, Fatherhood, Family, Childhood, Wisdom, Growing Up

“If by intellectual you mean somebody who works only with his head and not with his hands, then the bank clerk is an intellectual and Michelangelo is not. And today, with a computer, everybody is an intellectual. So I don’t think it has anything to do with someone’s profession or with someone’s social class. According to me, an intellectual is anyone who is creatively producing new knowledge. A peasant who understands that a new kind of graft can produce a new species of apples has at that moment produced an intellectual activity. Whereas the professor of philosophy who all his life repeats the same lecture on Heidegger doesn’t amount to an intellectual. Critical creativity—criticizing what we are doing or inventing better ways of doing it—is the only mark of the intellectual function.”

— Umberto Eco, The Art of Fiction No. 197: An Interview by Lila Azam Zanganeh

Tagged: Intellect, Creativity, Knowledge, Production

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