A Quote by Umberto Eco

Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale.

Umberto Eco

Quote Topics

America Australia Because Captain Christopher Columbus Cook Discovered Events Finding Full Happened History Imaginary India Looking Tale Thought

Quote Author

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

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can't get credit for discovering a land already populated by indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.

Jon Stewart

What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.

Margot Asquith

The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only - gold.

Woody Harrelson

America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

Samuel Eliot Morison

We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.

Susanna Kaysen

Christopher Columbus discovered America in a blue-and-white sailor shirt, and since then, men have been wearing blue and white shirts.

Mickey Drexler

In the twelfth century the Basque fishermen of Biarritz used to hunt whales with deadly efficiency. When the whales sensibly moved away, the Basques chased them further and further, with the consequence that the fishermen of Biarritz discovered America before Columbus did. This is a matter for local pride but on a larger view it is not quite so stunning, since with the possible exception of the Swiss everybody discovered America before Columbus did.

Clive James

When America has been discovered in America it will be discovered in Europe. They are looking for America now.

Gerald Stanley Lee

Christopher Columbus was looking for a passage to India, but he landed in America. He landed in the wrong place, and when he got back, he wasn't sure where he'd been. But most important of all, he did it on someone else's money.

Ronald Reagan

I was well known to African Americans before Bill Clinton discovered me. He was like Christopher Columbus riding up on something he didn't understand.

Sister Souljah

Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.

Bertrand Russell

All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.

Mark Twain

In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it.

Eduardo Galeano

The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.