But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.
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.
I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.
I live quietly at home among my family and friends.
The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.
Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear.
I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.
My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.
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.
I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.
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.
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.
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.
People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.
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.
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.
I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.
I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.
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.
