The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
Umberto EcoRead
This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The imagination can merge different memories to create new ideas and concepts.
Umberto Eco's quote highlights the power of the imagination in shaping our understanding of the world. By combining different elements from our memories, such as 'gold' and 'mountain,' we can create entirely new ideas, like that of a 'golden mountain.' This illustrates how creativity can lead to innovative thoughts that go beyond mere recollections.
Themes
ImaginationMemoryCreativityIdeasInnovation
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about creativity in the workplace.
More from Umberto Eco
All quotes βI think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.
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But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
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You die, but most of what you have accumulated will not be lost; you are leaving a message in a bottle.
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"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
Umberto EcoRead
The lunatic is all idΓ©e fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
Umberto EcoRead
Similar quotes
Non-Christians seem to think that the Incarnation implies some particular merit or excellence in humanity. But of course it implies just the reverse: a particular demerit and depravity. No creature that deserved Redemption would need to be redeemed. They that are whole need not the physician. Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.
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Try as you may, you cannot put the Lord in your debt. For every time you try to do His will, He simply pours out more blessings upon you.
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The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.
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I was forced to stretch my thinking, to realize that sincere and honest people could believe in very divergent religious doctrines.
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War is wrong. Conscription for war is inconsistent with freedom of conscience, which is not merely the right to believe but to act on the degree of truth that one receives, to follow a vocation which is God-inspired and God-directed.
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The essence of the miracle of forgiveness is that it brings peace to the previously anxious, restless, frustrated, perhaps tormented soul.
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