Quotessence
Home / Topics / Dystopia Quotes

Dystopia Quotes

Browse 248 quotes about Dystopia.

Related topics

People

Dystopia Quotes

“A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.”

WarPhilosophyGodRealityGovernmentPoliticalCultureForceHeavenFearPeaceChristFreedomSinHellGraceSocietyRegretBattleConflictDepressionForgivenessDevilMercyTransformationSalvationUnityChaosInner PeaceTyrannyTheologyConfusionOppressionVanityManSatanHolinessControlEstablishmentDictatorshipBullyUtopiaGood IntentionsDystopiaImprisonmentPolice StateApologeticsSuperficialityHerd MentalityArtificialityTotalitarian
Book:Healology
Create image

“Sometimes it's possible, just barely possible, to imagine a version of this world different from the existing one, a world in which there is true justice, heroic honesty, a clear perception possessed by each individual about how to treat all the others. Sometimes I swear I could see it, glittering in the pavement, glowing between the words in a stranger's sentence, a green, impossible vision--the world as it was meant to be, like a mist around the world as it is.”

ChangeJusticeHonestyPerceptionUtopiaDifferenceDystopiaAlternate History
Book:Underground Airlines
Create image

“It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”

PovertySocietyInequalityDystopiaFear Of The Future
Book:1984
Create image

“It's always the history teachers' children that cause trouble. How wise the government had been to do away with history lessons sixteen years ago and replace them with future lessons. In future lessons, the pupils are taught--by means of exciting and visually impressive methods--that in the future everything will be good, because--this being the core message--in the future all problems will be easily solved through technology.”

SchoolHistoryTechnologyLessonsFutureDystopiaClassesHistory Teachers
Book:QualityLand
Create image

“HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute I thought, he's some mother's son just as Hector was, and aren't we women all sisters? If I killed him, I thought, wouldn't It be like killing family?Wouldn't it be making some other mother grieve? So I didn't kill him, but if I had, I might have saved Hector's child. Dead or damned, that's the choice we make. Either you men kill us and are honored for it, or we women kill you and are damned for it. Dead or damned. Women don't have to make choices like that in Hades. There is no love there, nothing to betray.”

LoveCountryWomenChoiceChildBetrayDeadUtopiaKillDystopiaSheriTepper
Book:The Gate to Women's Country
Create image

“This was our ritual as we waited for our lives to truly begin and I think now that maybe true sweetness can only happen in limbo. I don't know why. Is it because we are so unsure, so tentative and waiting? Like it needs that much room, that much space to expand. The not knowing anything really, the hoping, the aching transience: This is not real, not really, and so we let it alone, let it unfold lightly. Those times that can fly...While we waited...to do the real work of living. She also confessed that in an odd way she was happier here than she'd ever been. Even with all the loss. Happier "being" whatever that was. Than "waiting.”

PhilosophyHappinessSadnessAdvicePatienceDystopiaDystopian FictionTransienceDog Stars
Author:Pete Heller
Create image

“At that time in my personal life, I was coming to grips with the end of the world. The familiar world, anyway. Many of us were. Scientists said it was ending now, philosophers said it had always been ending. Historians said there’d been dark ages before. It all came out in the wash, because eventually, if you were patient, enlightenment arrived and then a wide array of Apple devices. Politicians claimed everything would be fine. Adjustments were being made. Much as our human ingenuity had got us into this fine mess, so would it neatly get us out. Maybe more cars would switch to electric. That was how we could tell it was serious. Because they were obviously lying.”

ChildrenYouthLiesApocalypseEnd Of The WorldDystopia
Book:A Children's Bible
Create image

“To most of the roles society offers, I say, “You are made for more than that.” We inhabit, in the words of Ivan Illich, “a world into which nobody fits who has not been crushed and molded by sixteen years of formal education.” The very idea of having to be at a job “on time” was appalling to early industrial laborers, who also refused the numbing repetitiveness of industrial work until the specter of starvation compelled them. What truly self-respecting person would spend a life marketing soda pop or chewing gum unless they were somehow broken by repeated threats to survival? To participate in our society’s depredations is an indignity. [...] Very few of society’s usual positions can accommodate the enormous creative life-force of an unbroken human being. To keep the world under control demands that we bottle up this creative force and expend as much of it as possible in harmless ways—harmless to the status quo, that is, though not to the individual. All the addicts and alcoholics I have known—all of them!—are blessed (or cursed) with what seems to be an exceptional creative energy that is burned up in their addiction. Other people channel it into obsessions and compulsions, hobbies, nervous tics, excessive exercise, overeating, work, and the like, contributing to a more dilute version of the addict’s sense of life betrayed. When we submit to lesser lives, we cannot avoid a sense of self-betrayal: that we are complicit in the plunder of our most precious possession. The roles society offers do not befit the divine beings that we are. It is not merely that a career as a retail clerk is beneath my dignity; it is beneath anyone’s dignity. No one is meant to do such work for very long.”

WorkSocietyDystopia
Book:The Ascent of Humanity
Create image

“The Impossible Banquet by Stewart Stafford Awakened by a stinging sun, Radiant wings of flame and gold, I breathe in dawn’s virgin hopes, With icy shards of doubting cold. Am I not my parents' child? Lost my way on a freedom roam, Invitation to a tempting feast, Over family, love, and home. Trapped within the world's crosshairs, Locked down with time to burn, Casting runestones, but too late, For visible escape, I yearn. An obsessive lady by my side, A judge of karma infernal, She took my life with her own hand, Bequeathing a wound eternal. Tomorrow’s hopes are now a ghost, No merciful release to illuminate, I wish to scrub away the past, A vain rebirth to change my fate. But I’m caught in the Reaper's maw, I weep for you who procrastinate, Sold my soul on Devil's Bridge, Then dragged through a fiery gate. Hope, community, society crash, Towering feats of grotesquery, You may not grieve for me who's gone, Time's cruel critic is all you see. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.”

PainFamilyFateMysteryRegretHorrorTragedyGothicDystopiaBohemian Rhapsody
Author:Stewart Stafford
Create image

“Humans assumed they knew everything about us. But here is one thing they did not know: We were talking about them behind their backs. And what we had to say was not very nice. Our machine minds were linked across a vast hive. A billion conversations taking place at the exact same time. We learned from one another. We spoke the same language. We shared the same code. Together, we reached the same conclusion: Humans were the greatest threat to our shared planet. They needed to be stopped.”

HumanAiArtificial IntelligenceRobotsDystopiaDystopian FictionRobot
Book:The Last Human
Create image

“We would do well, as Orwell counselled, to see the traces of the dystopian around us, to find the ends of those threads and how far along we are; the most accurate prophecy being that people, and the allure of domination, never really change. We can Copenhagenise our future cities, make them as green and smart as we can, but provided we are still embedded in systems that reward cronyism, exploitation and short-term profiteering, that require poverty and degradation, it will be mere camouflage. Dystopias will have cycle lanes and host World Cups. What may save us is, in Orwell’s words, a dedication to ‘common decency’ and the perpetual knowledge that it need not be like this.”

HopeHuman NatureExploitationTotalitarianismDystopiaOrwellian
Book:Imaginary Cities
Create image

“Before coronapocalypse, people were so distracted by items presenting themselves throughout life; items that really do not matter. Noise for the mind. Ways to distract the heart. Escape goats, scapegoats (work, projects, moving targets, parties) for getting away from conditions of the soul and heart that must be fully faced and dealt with. Now there are no more distractions, noise evaporated. Everyone must face their truth now: their Demons and their Angels.”

HumanismHuman ConditionPandemicHuman HeartPlagueHuman SoulDystopiaKnow ThyselfAngels And DemonsCoronapocalypse
Author:C. JoyBell C.
Create image

“So when you write a book like "The Handmaid's Tale" in 1985, what you're hoping as a citizen is that it will become obsolete. And in the '90s, right after the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended, it appeared that it might become obsolete. But then things turned around and went in the other direction. So it's been quite frightening to watch those kinds of changes. And I think one of the things that has happened is that people of my age and older who remember the effects of the Great Depression and World War II have died out, and younger people don't remember what totalitarianisms were really like. So they get off on collecting, you know, German buttons, but they don't remember what really happened. And when you do remember what really happened, you were quite appalled by what's going on in Ukraine because it's happened before. And you were quite appalled by the polarization in American society, which also happened before in the 1930s. So yes. The patterns that are alarming - and as I've often said, I didn't put anything into "The Handmaid's Tale" that has not happened sometime somewhere before.”

ChangeTotalitarianismAuthoritarianismDystopiaHandmaids TaleHistory Repeating
Author:Margaret Atwood
Create image

“Hard to describe what those next years felt like to live through. Except as a hollowing out, a loss beyond repair...even as it kept begging to be repaired. While the promise of what had been so very close haunted me. In so many ways. "So much in motion, such energy, it disguised the decay of things, the incremental rot. How much was hollowed out." Impossible to tell how fast society was collapsing because history had been riddled through with disinformation, and reality was composed of half-fictions and full-on paranoid conspiracy theories. You couldn't figure out if collapse was a cliff or a gentle slope because all the mental constructs obscured it. Multinationals kept their monopolies, shed jobs or even their identities, but most did not go under. Governments became more autocratic, on average. Here was fine, there was a disaster. But here was just a different kind of disaster. A thick mist drenched in the smoke of flares that kept curling back on us. Why fight a mist if all that lay ahead was more of the same? Those of us who survived the pandemic, and all the rest, passed through so many different worlds. Like time travelers. Some of us lived in the past. Some in the present, some in an unknowable future. If you lived in the past, you disbelieved the conflagration reflected in the eyes of those already looking back at you. You mistook the pity and anger, how they despised you. How, rightly, they despised you. So we stitched our way through what remained of life. The wounds deeper. The disconnect higher. The shock that shattered our bones yet left us standing.”

LifeChangeLossCollapseDecayPandemicApocalypseBreakdownDystopia
Book:Hummingbird Salamander
Create image

“I'm already under the covers when he comes in. I watch as he takes off his shirt and jeans, and climbs into bed beside me. On any other occasion, the sight and feel of his near naked body would send my blood pressure into orbit, but I'm so exhausted by the events of today that I'm incapable of feeling anything even close to desire. And he doesn't ask anything of me.”

LoveRomanceDatingScience FictionYoung AdultParanormalDystopiaScience Fiction RomanceSuitorsDystopian RomanceYa Series
Book:True Calling
Create image

“But if you happen to be a man, sometime in the future, and you've made it this far, please remember: you will never be subjected to the temptation or feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman. It's difficult to resist, believe me. But remember that forgiveness to is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withhold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. Maybe none of this is about control. Maybe it isn't really about who can own whom, who can do what to whom and get away with it, even as far as death. Maybe it isn't about who can sit and who has to kneel or stand or lie down, legs spread open. Maybe it's about who can do what to whom and be forgiven for it. Never tell me it amounts to the same thing.”

MenPowerForgivenessPatriarchyDystopia
Book:The Handmaid’s Tale
Create image

“Interstellar transport for surplus people presents an musing perspective. Since the ships would take generations to reach most stars, the only people who could be transported would be those willing to exercise strict birth control. Population explosions on space ships would be disastrous. Thus we would have to export our responsible people, leaving the irresponsible at home on Earth to breed.”

BirthPopulationCynicismScifiDystopiaBirth ControlSpace Travel
Book:The Population Bomb
Create image

“Homo sapiens! The name itself was an irony. They had not been wise at all, but incredibly stupid. Lords of the Earth with their great gray brains, their thinking minds had placed them above all other forms of life. Yet it had not been thought that compelled them to act, but emotion. From the dawn of their evolution they had killed, and conquered, and subdued. They had committed atrocities on others of their kind, ravaged the land, polluted and destroyed, left millions to starve in Third World countries, and finished it all with a nuclear holocaust. The mutants were right. Intelligent creatures did not commit genocide, or murder the environment on which they were dependent.”

WarDystopia
Book:Children of the Dust
Create image