Philosophy appears to concern itself only with the truth, but perhaps expresses only fantasies, while literature appears to concern itself only with fantasies, but perhaps it expresses the truth.

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.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

No matter what your circumstance, if you provide kids with creative ammunition, they will blast holes into an oppressive reality, and conceive limitless worlds.

Love is so many things, but it is not safe.

Technique is communication: the two words are synonymous in conductors.

Courtesy is a silver lining around the dark clouds of civilization; it is the best part of refinement and in many ways, an art of heroic beauty in the vast gallery of man's cruelty and baseness.

I am an unstoppable killing machine. I am the greatest champion that ever walked the face of this planet.

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians.

I have tried to do what is true and not ideal.

Personally I think we're over-specialized. Why it's getting so we have experts who concentrate only on the lower section of a specimen's left ear.

I like small stories.

Extraterrestrial intelligence could have sent DNA-seed packets out through space to plant life on hospitable planets such as earth.