“Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't know you know.”

— Umberto Eco, book The Prague Cemetery

Source: The Prague Cemetery

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know…" by Umberto Eco?

Umberto Eco photo

Umberto Eco120

Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic… 1932–2016

Related quotes

“Clarity is of no importance because nobody listens and nobody knows what you mean no matter what you mean, nor how clearly you mean what you mean. But if you have vitality enough of knowing enough of what you mean, somebody and sometime and sometimes a great many will have to realize that you know what you mean and so they will agree that you mean what you know, what you know you mean, which is as near as anybody can come to understanding any one.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Four in America (1933)

“If you don't know history, then you don't know anything. You are a leaf that doesn't know it is part of a tree.”

Michael Crichton Timeline

Variant: Professor Johnston often said that if you didn't know history, you didn't know anything. You were a leaf that didn't know it was part of a tree.
Source: Timeline

“I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 1: "From Rockaway to MIT", "Who Stole the Door?", p. 36-37
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

“If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things that others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.”

Don DeLillo Point Omega

Source: Point Omega

“I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with someone even if they could have. I need to know these people exist.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.”

Jane Austen book Northanger Abbey

Source: Northanger Abbey

“People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

“It doesn't matter what you can do if you don't know why you're doing it.”

Chuck Klosterman Eating the Dinosaur

Source: Eating the Dinosaur

“The whole problem with people is they don't know what matters and what doesn't.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

“We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, "You don't know what you are talking about!". The second one says, "What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

What do you mean by you?"
volume I; lecture 8, "Motion"; section 8-1, "Description of motion"; p. 8-2
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Related topics