Umberto Eco Quotes

Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything.

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.

Men will believe anything at all provided they are under no obligation to believe it.

Belief is such a powerful thing - but because it is, it can also be very destructive and it's very easily manipulated.

Those who know nothing must believe everything.

He that believes all misseth; he that believes nothing, hits not.

Skepticism is the highest duty and blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

The characteristic of the present age is craving credulity.

More persons, on the whole, are humbugged by believing in nothing, than by believing too much.

There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.

A man of good sense always believes what he is told, and what he finds written down.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

It is time that we admitted that faith is nothing more than the license religious people give one another to keep believing when reasons fail.

It is equally a fault to believe all men or to believe none.

Don't accuse anyone with the temerity to question your sad supernatural fantasies of having a 'closed mind' or being 'blind to possibilities'. A closed mind asks no questions, unthinkingly accepting that which it wants to believe. The blindness is all yours.

Buddhism strongly discourages blind faith and fanaticism.

I don't discount belief. I just discount most of the things that people believe in.

People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.

Is there any man that thinks in chains like the man who calls himself a free-thinker? Is there any man so credulous as the man who will not believe in the Bible? He swallows a ton of difficulties, and yet complains that we have swallowed an ounce of them. He has much more need of faith of a certain sort than we have, for skepticism has far harder problems than faith.

I do not believe in Belief.

Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.

Why understand when you can believe?

Believe everything you hear said of the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.