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

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves.

The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.

My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.

People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.

I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.

I don't have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some more should be added to the list, but I don't have the slightest doubt about human rights.

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 don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.

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.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

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

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.

Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I'm given a shirt that's too clean, one that's completely white, I immediately start having doubts.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.

My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.

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.

Xenophobia manifests itself especially against civilizations and cultures that are weak because they lack economic resources, means of subsistence or land. So nomadic people are the first targets of this kind of aggression.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.

Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.

There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.

Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear.

Like a blazing comet Ive traversed infinite nights interstellar spaces of the imagination voluptuousness and fear.

There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.

When in doubt wear red.

As I think through the issue of funding the rebuilding of Iraq, I think about the analogy of a bankruptcy proceeding. There is no doubt that Iraq as a country is bankrupt.

After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore, and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

We criticize, copy, patronize, idolize and insult but we never doubt that the U.S. has a unique position in the history of human hopes.

If you've got talent, stick with it... because talent wins out, without a doubt.

That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter.

I would not be gotten into a schoolhouse until I was eight years old. Nor did I accomplish much after I started. I doubt if I had gone to school six months in all when my father died. I was fourteen at the time.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

You have to not listen to the nay sayers because there will be many and often they'll be much more qualified than you and cause you to sort of doubt yourself.

It has since been agreed that speeches given in English will be translated into French and vice versa, and even into German and Italian when necessary. No doubt translations into Esperanto will also soon be in demand.

Who has suffered? The families of the dead, no doubt. But a greater loss was inflicted on Pakistan because, as I said, we lost the pillars of our society.