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

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.

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.

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.

[T]he atoms or elementary particles themselves are not real

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

I was raised that way: don't get mad, get smart.

Never ask a favor until you are drawing your last breath; and never forget one.

A poet may be a good companion, but, so far as I know, he is ever the worst of fathers.

I didn't come in here to argue with a woman with big hair

If you're working with a director you trust, you can turn that part of you off that wants to direct other actors in a certain way.

It's not a bad thing for a writer not to feel at home. Writers - we're much more comfortable at parties standing in the corner watching everybody else having a good time than we are mingling.

The idea of nature contains, though often unnoticed, an extraordinary amount of human history.

I never exploited my father’s role in helping Jews avoid the concentration camps...