Meandering in the stacks . . .

Today is the birthday of Umberto Eco (born January 5, 1932), medievalist, semiotician, philosopher, literary critic and novelist. He is best known for his novel The Name of the Rose.

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." - Umberto Eco

"Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else. This something else does not necessarily have to exist or to actually be somewhere at the moment in which a sign stands in for it. Thus 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. I think that the definition of a 'theory of the lie' should be taken as a pretty comprehensive program for a general semiotics." - Umberto Eco

"I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us." - Umberto Eco

"The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else." - Umberto Eco

"Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges." - Umberto Eco

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