National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion…. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery.
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
Who knows how many ... people in this world still think they are being threatened by some conspiracy? Here's a form to be filled out at will, by each person with his own conspiracy.... What does everyone desire, and desire more fervently the more wretched and unfortunate they are? To earn money easily, to have power (the enormous pleasure in commanding and humiliating your fellow man) and to avenge every wrong suffered (everyone in life has suffered at least one wrong, however small it might be).... But why; everybody asks, am I not blessed by fortune (or at least not as blessed as I would like to be)? Why have I not been favored like others who are less deserving? No one believes their misfortunes are attributable to any shortcomings of their own; that is why they must find a culprit..... [T]he explanation for their failure. It was some one else... who planned your ruin.
Umberto Eco, The Prague Cemetery
