Umberto Eco Quotes

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

It has been said that metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct.

Men can reason themselves into almost any sort of opinion if they are so inclined.

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct.

The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

I think that there's a strain in journalism that believes that anyone who surrenders him- or herself to faith and to belief necessarily checks reason and rationality at the door.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance with his instincts, he will accept it even on the slenderest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Religion was always an easy class. All you had to do was suspend the logic and reasoning you were taught in all the other classes.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

Most of the time, when someone tells you something, and it makes sense, it just makes sense. And that's that. But sometimes it really doesn't make sense.

A private man has always the liberty (because thought is free) to believe or not believe in his heart those acts that have been given out for miracles, according as he shall see what benefits can accrue by men's belief, to those that pretend, or countenance them, and thereby conjecture whether they be miracles or lies.

Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy.

I do not believe in Belief.

Not believing has a sickness which is believing a little.

People are stupid... They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid it might be true.

Why can you believe the lie, but not the truth?

I doubt the fact, to begin with, but if it be so even, what is this but in grand words asking me to believe a thing because I like it.

Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.

Doubting everything and believing everything are two equally convenient solutions that guard us from having to think

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.

Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.

To be clever in argument is not rationality but rationalization.