A Quote by Umberto Eco

[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.

Umberto Eco

Quote Topics

Am Because Billions Boring Different Fascinated Finished Four Infinite Intelligence Make Makes Normal Numbers Plus Possibilities Stupidity Two

Quote Author

Umberto Eco
Italian - Novelist
January 5, 1932 - February 19, 2016

If enough money is involved and enough people believe that two plus two equals five the media will report the story with a straight face always adding a qualifying paragraph noting that mathematicians however say that two plus two still equals four.

Susan Jacoby

Some things you just can't question. Like you can't question why two plus two is four. So don't question it, don't try to look it up. I don't know who made it, all I know is it was put in my head that two plus two is four. So certain things happen. Why does it rain? Why am I so sexy? I don't know.

Shaquille O'Neal

Presently, my understanding of the fundamental principles of the theory of high-intensity training is thorough and complete - not two plus two equals three-and-a-half, but two plus two equals four! Heretofore, I would only occasionally have clients gain 10 to 20 pounds in a month or 30 to 40 pounds in three to four months. Now such is no longer the exception , but the rule!

Mike Mentzer

Numbers still gave Astrid pleasure. That was the great thing about numbers: it required no faith to believe that two plus two equaled four. And math never, ever condemned you for your thoughts and desires.

Michael Grant

Nobody's going to tell me how to be different, so stop asking me. Stop asking me what two-plus-two is. Everybody knows two-plus-two is five.

Shaquille O'Neal

The man who has learned that three plus one are four doesn't have to go through a proof of that assertion with coins, or dice, or chess pieces, or pencils. He knows it, and that's that. He cannot conceive a different sum. There are mathematicians who say that three plus one is a tautology for four, a different way of saying "four" ... If three plus one can be two, or fourteen, then reason is madness.

Jorge Luis Borges

When I see two owls and then two more owls and conclude that I see four owls, I am responding to reasons, and it better not be my choice to believe that two plus two always equals four. If I am a rational person, I will have that belief by necessity, whether I wanted to or not. So it's not that strange to discuss responding to reasons out of necessity.

Nomy Arpaly

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you five, that is a mistake. But if you ask a man how much is two plus two and he tells you ninety-seven, that is no longer a mistake. The man you are talking to is operating with a wholly different logic from your own.

Thomas Friedman

Sex is two plus two making five, rather than four. Sex is the X ingredient that you can't define, and it's that X ingredient between two people that make both a man and a woman good in bed. It's all relative. There are no rules.

Marty Feldman

A radical thinks two and two makes five. A liberal is more conservative. he knows two and two make four, but he's unhappy about it.

Herbert V. Prochnow

Skibbereen have a hard time at [math]; the best that the smartest of them can do with adding two plus two is guessing: three plus one. Correct, sort of, but not always useful.

Gregory Maguire

I want to represent possibilities. I want to represent magic, right, that you're in a universe, and two plus two equals four.

Will Smith

There are two kinds of directors: There's the kind where two plus two equals four, and you have to help them figure it out. And then there's the kind that throws you in a room, locks the door, sets the house on fire and films it.

Michael Pitt

One thing that definitely did calculate properly for me was the mathematics that makes sense every day, no matter how I look at it, I can't get around it. I try to get around it, I keep trying to find one plus one is not two, somehow. I can't. People can talk about string theory, parallel realities, different dimensions, it's still one plus one is two, baby.