UTOPIA QUOTES IV

quotations about Utopia

Just because a utopia is unattainable in practice--"unattainable" is almost part of the definition--that doesn't mean the utopian impulse can't have great power along a different parameter.

JOHN CROWLEY

"Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia", Boston Review, April 20, 2017


I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.

C. S. LEWIS

The World's Last Night

Tags: C. S. Lewis


Utopia is informed by a desire for immediate gratification that is typical of adolescence.

CHRISTOPHER S. FERNS

Narrating Utopia: Ideology, Gender, Form in Utopian Literature


In Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores full, no private man can want anything; for among them there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is poor, none in necessity; and though no man has anything, yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties.

THOMAS MORE

Utopia

Tags: Sir Thomas More


When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build.

HENRY KUTTNER

The Creatures from Beyond Infinity


The faith that moves mountains and conceives of a world without slaves immediately transports itself to utopia, separating the reign of God from the reign of Caesar. This reassures Caesar.

EMMANUEL LEVINAS

"Place and Utopia"


In its flexibility and in its wide-open opportunities, this is the total Utopia. Anything that you can conceive of, you can do in this non-world. Nothing can stop you except a total bankruptcy of creativity. The seedbed is waiting. All the circumstances stand ready. The fructifying minerals are literally jumping out of the ground. And nothing grows. And nothing grows. And nothing grows. Well, why doesn't it?

R. A. LAFFERTY

The Day After the World Ends


Perhaps everybody has a garden of Eden, I don't know; but they have scarcely seen their garden before they see the flaming sword. Then, perhaps, life only offers the choice of remembering the garden or forgetting it. Either, or: it takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget.

JAMES BALDWIN

Giovanni's Room

Tags: James Baldwin


I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure.... I grew up in utopia.

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

Pacific Edge


Basically, if you're not a utopianist, you're a schmuck.

JONOTHON FELDMAN

attributed, Hollywood Blockbusters: The Anthropology of Popular Movies


Utopia gets a bad rap. If someone calls you or your idea "utopian," they usually mean it as an insult, a synonym for naïve and unrealistic. But everyone should envision an ideal world. Even if you doubt your utopia is attainable, it can serve as a useful thought experiment. Imagine a really good world, and imagine how we can get there. All progress begins with such wishful thinking.

JOHN HORGAN

"What's your utopia?", The Stute, April 28, 2017


Theirs was a civilization in which the initial difficulties had long since been overcome. The untroubled peace, the unmeasured plenty, the steady health, the large good will and smooth management which ordered everything, left nothing to overcome. It was like a pleasant family in an old established perfectly-run country place.

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

Herland


Personally I know only one person who wrote about utopia. Afterwards he was executed. I suppose it's not my genre.

ALEXANDER ZALAN

Pavilion of Thoughts


In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality ... we can no longer hope to save everything, but ... we can at least try to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.

ALBERT CAMUS

Between Hell and Reason

Tags: Albert Camus


Utopia was here at last: its novelty had not yet been assailed by the supreme enemy of all Utopias--boredom.

ARTHUR C. CLARKE

Childhood's End

Tags: Arthur C. Clarke


The political experiments of the 20th century tell us all we need to know: utopias should be regarded not as serious political interventions but as a kind of social poetry.

RICHARD KING

"Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There: 21st century capitalism", The Australian, April 15, 2017


True, history is full of horrifying forms of utopianism--fascism, communism, Nazism--just as every religion has also spawned fanatical sects. But of one religious radical incites violence, should we automatically write off the whole religion? So why write off the utopianism? Should we simply stop dreaming of a better world altogether?

RUTGER BREGMAN

Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World


The problem I have with socialist utopias is there's some kind of committees trying to soften outcomes for people. I think that imposes models of outcomes for other people's lives. So in a spiritual sense there's some bit of libertarian in me. But the critical thing for me is moderation. And if you let that go far you do end up with a winner-take-all society that ultimately crushes everybody even worse.

JARON LANIER

"Jaron Lanier: The Internet Destroyed the Middle Class", Salon, May 12, 2013

Tags: Jaron Lanier


Be vary wary of people who declare that they're going to create heaven on earth, they almost invariably create hell.

FRANÇOIS LELORD

Hector and the Search for Happiness


Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

Pacific Edge