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Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist.

— Umberto Eco Ur-Fascism (1995)

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More quotes by Umberto Eco

A philosophy has a practical power: it contributes to the changing of the world.

Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.

Indeterminacy, complementarity, noncausality are not modes of being in the physical world, but systems for describing it in a convenient way.

The Role of the Reader : Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979)

One should not have the arrogance to declare that God does not exist.

No algorithm exists for the metaphor, nor can a metaphor be produced by means of a computer's precise instructions, no matter what the volume of organized information to be fed in.

Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (1984)

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Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

Albert Einstein

Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Mao Zedong

Three-fourths of the Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state.

Benito Mussolini

Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

Theodor Adorno The Authoritarian Personality (1950)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Umberto Eco (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.