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Utopia Quotes

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Utopia Quotes

“Your realm is an insane place. In Volaria, no-one goes hungry, slaves are no use when they starve. Those freeborn too lazy or lacking in intelligence to turn sufficient profit to feed themselves are made slaves so they can generate wealth for those deserving of freedom, and be fed in return. Here, your people are chained by their freedom, free to starve and beg from the rich. It's disgusting.”

PeopleCountryWisdomStrongWorkWealthPoorMoneyPowerRichLandWeakMadSlaveHungerIntelligenceProfitHungryInsaneChainsDumbLazyCashUnfortunateIrrationalFreeUtopiaNationPlaceDystopiaServitudeIllogicalEnslavementChainedSlavesNonsensicalFeedUnintelligentBegStarveRealmQuid Pro QuoEnslavedFreebornVolaria
Book:Tower Lord
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“... this system we call the transnational world order is just feudalism all over again, a set of rules that is anti-ecologic, it does not give back but rather enriches a floating international elite while impoverishing everything else, and so of course the so-called rich elite are in actuality poor as well, disengaged from real human work and therefore from real human accomplishment, parasitical in the most precise sense, and yet powerful too as parasites that have taken control can be, sucking the gifts of human work away from their rightful recipients which are the seven generations, and feeding on them while increasing the repressive powers that keep them in place!”

PowerAccomplishmentColonialismUtopiaWorld OrderColonizationPolitical EconomyFeudalism
Book:Red Mars
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“Intelligent people have said again and again: "How easily men could make things much better than they are-if they only all tried togetherl". But people never do "all try together," because the principle of natural selection guarantees that self-prop systems will act mainly for their own survival and propagation in competition with other self-prop systems, and will not sacrifice competitive advantages for the achievement of philanthropic goals.”

UtopiaPrimitivismUnabomberSelf Prop Systems
Book:Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How
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“The reason why camps proved economically profitable had been foreseen as far back as Thomas More, the great-grandfather of socialism, in his Utopia. The labor of the zeks was needed for degrading and particularly heavy work, which no one, under socialism, would wish to perform. For work in remote and primitive localities where it would not be possible to construct housing, schools, hospitals, and stores for many years to come. For work with pick and spade—in the flowering of the twentieth century. For the erection of the great construction projects of socialism, when the economic means for them did not yet exist.”

Utopia1974Hard LaborPrison LaborFor Profit PrisonsWe Are Building
Book:The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Books III-IV
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“Quando o teu Platão decreta que as repúblicas só serão felizes se os filósofos reinarem ou se os reis filosofarem, quão longe estará a felicidade se os filósofos não condescenderem nem mesmo a repartir um conselho com o reis?" [Morus] "Eles não são", respondeu Rafael, "tão ingratos que não fariam isso prazerosamente. Na verdade, muitos já o fizeram em seus livros: se aqueles que podem assenhorar-se das coisas estivessem preparados, bem os consultando conseguiriam seus conselhos. Sem dúvidas, porém, como bem já previu Platão, a não ser que os próprios reis filosofassem, nunca, impregnados e infectados desde a infância por opiniões corrompidas, nunca reconheceriam detalhadamente os conselhos dos filósofos, o que Platão também pôde experimentar junto a Dionísio de Siracusa. Acaso não pensas que, se eu propusesse princípios sensatos a algum rei e me esforçasse por eliminar, dele, as perniciosas sementes dos males, eu seria prontamente expulso ou, então, considerado com escárnio?" Editora Vozes, 2016, p. 40.”

UtopiaPolíticaFilosofia
Book:A Utopia
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“Para el impensable año dos mil se auguraba –sin especificar cómo íbamos a lograrlo– un porvenir de plenitud y bienestar universales. Ciudades limpias, sin injusticia, sin pobres, sin violencia, sin congestiones, sin basura. Para cada familia una casa ultramoderna y aerodinámica (palabras de la época). A nadie le faltaría nada. Las máquinas harían todo el trabajo. Calles repletas de árboles y fuentes, cruzadas por vehículos sin humo ni estruendo ni posibilidad de colisiones. El paraíso en la tierra. La utopía al fin conquistada.”

UtopiaFuturo2000LimpiezaMáquinasAño
Book:Las batallas en el desierto
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“I più celebrati utopisti dei tempi moderni... offrono un quadro pressochè statico degli attributi essenziali dell'uomo e, di conseguenza, una descrizione altrettanto statica della società perfetta ritenuta raggiungibile. Con ciò essi ignorano il carattere degli uomini in quanto esseri che si autotrasformano, che sono capaci di libere scelte - entro i limiti imposti dalla natura e dalla storia - fra scopi contrastanti e reciprocamente incompatibili.”

UtopiaLibertà
Book:The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the History of Ideas
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“We talk about creating an utopia, but we install an empire and we build our success on the back of the exploited. We talk about equality, but we ignore the power structures that silence the voices of the less powerful. We talk about meritocracy, but we only promote and care for those from the core planets. We talk about science and rationality, but we pray to extinct gods and worship mutated humans.”

SuccessScienceReligionEqualityRationalityUtopiaMeritocracyEgalitarianismEmpirePower Structures
Book:Ancient as the Stars: A Space Opera Adventure
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“Against those who are indebted to the allegorical utopian model and its offshoots, the Memory Palace proves that alternatives to the tribal consensus exists. Furthermore, this alternative is a leap away, is deeply discontinuous with the allegorists' endless internal struggles for refinement. It promises not quite freedom but the fact that a careful look at history as achievement rather than ruination offers solid evidence that the allegorical utopian has about it no necessity at all.”

UtopiaAllegorySimonidesMessianism
Book:Love’s Shadow
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“...I take as a point of departure the possibility and desirability of a fundamentally different form of society--call it communism, if you will--in which men and women, freed from the pressures of scarcity and from the insecurity of everyday existence under capitalism, shape their own lives. Collectively they decide who, how, when, and what shall be produced.”

ExistenceCapitalismSocialismCommunismSociologyMarxismUtopiaCollectiveNeo Marxism
Book:Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism
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“Ma gli strumenti che create voi in realtà producono bisogni di socialità innaturalmente estremi. Nessuno ha davvero bisogno del numero di contatti che fornite voi. Non porta a nessun miglioramento. Non è nutriente. È come le merendine. Sai come le studiano? Determinano con scientifica precisione di quanto sale e quanti grassi hanno bisogno per farti continuare a mangiare. Tu non hai fame, non senti il bisogno di mangiare, quello che hai davanti non ti stuzzica, ma continui a mangiare queste calorie vuote. Ecco quello che spacciate voi. La stessa cosa. Un numero incalcolabile di calorie vuote, il loro equivalente digitale e sociale.”

UtopiaDistopiaThe CircleDave EggersIl Cerchio
Author:Dave Eggers
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“Thus the Utopia of terrestrial paradise implies an absolute humanity within the transitory relations of terrestrial history. But there is no room in terrestrial reality, by its nature strictly confined and limited, for an absolute life. Yet the Utopia theory asserts that what has been impossible until now will not be so always, that an absolute and conclusive state will sooner or later crown historical relations. It affirms, not a transition from limited historical relations to some other plane of being, to some fourth dimension commensurable with the closed three dimensional world, but a fourth dimension of absolute life within the very framework of three-dimensional space. In this lie its fundamental metaphysical antithesis and essential instability, instead of seeing absolute life as the transition from terrestrial to, celestial history, it presupposes an ultimate solution of human destiny within the framework of terrestrial relations, a final integration of the three-dimensional world. It desires to humanize that absolute perfection and beatitude which can only be attained in the celestial reality and only contained in the fourth dimension.”

TimeParadiseMetaphysicsUtopia
Book:The Meaning of History
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“Un modo di rendere produttive, in senso fantastico, le parole, è quello di deformarle. Lo fanno i bambini, per gioco: un gioco che ha un contenuto molto serio, perché li aiuta a esplorare le possibilità delle parole, a dominarle, forzandole a declinazioni inedite; stimola la loro libertà di «parlanti», con diritto alla loro personale "parole" (grazie, signor Saussure); incoraggia in loro l'anticonformismo. Nello spirito di questo gioco è l'uso di un prefisso arbitrario. Io stesso vi ho fatto ricorso più volte. Basta una "s" a trasformare un «temperino» - oggetto quotidiano e trascurabile, per di più pericoloso e offensivo - in uno «stemperino», oggetto fantastico e pacifista, che non serve a far la punta alle matite, ma a fargliela ricrescere quand'è consunta. Con rabbia dei cartolai e dell'ideologia consumistica. Non senza allusioni di colore sessuale, ben occultate, ma non per questo non recepibili (sotto il livello della coscienza) dai bambini. Lo stesso prefisso mi dà lo «staccapanni», cioè il contrario dell'«attaccapanni»: non serve per appendervi gli abiti, ma per staccarli quando se ne ha bisogno, in un paese di vetrine senza vetri, negozi senza cassa e guardaroba senza scontrino. Dal prefisso all'utopia. Ma non è certo vietato immaginare una città futura in cui i cappotti siano gratuiti come l'acqua e l'aria. E l'utopia non è meno educativa dello spirito critico." 8. Il prefisso arbitrario, p. 31”

UtopiaRodariAnticonformismoGrammatica Della FantasiaPrefisso Arbitrario
Book:Grammatica della Fantasia: Introduzione all'Arte di Inventare Storie
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“Some thoughts on heaven? I have this theory that heaven is different for everyone. It has to be, or it wouldn’t be heaven. My grandmother’s heaven? In her heaven she doesn’t have to share the remote with anyone, and it is Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune on all the time, with nary a rerun ever, and the old lady always wins the big money and a trip to Europe to tour a castle or somewhere warm but not too hot with nice churches. In her heaven your knees don’t hurt and your back doesn’t hurt and you get to be whatever age was your favourite age to be and you still have all your teeth and there are bingo games right after dinner and raspberry hard candies and no one ever has to do the dishes. In my gran’s heaven, you can still have yourself a proper smoke in the living room and it doesn’t ruin the new paint job and the lawn never gets too long and the foxes don’t chase the birds off the birdfeeder. In her heaven, a nice bit of cheese won’t give you the bad stomach and real men don’t beat their wives or fuck their children, and every day is payday, and the Friday of a long weekend. Floors wax themselves, but you still get to hang the laundry, but only if you feel like it.”

HappinessHeavenFamilyIdealismUtopiaPerfect Day
Book:Tomboy Survival Guide
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“If you do not want to stop the wheels of progress; if you do not want to go back to the Dark Ages; if you do not want to live again under tyranny, then you must guard your liberty, and you must not let the church get control of your government. If you do, you will lose the greatest legacy ever bequeathed to the human race—intellectual freedom. Now let me tell you another thing. If all the energy and wealth wasted upon religion—in all of its varied forms—had been spent to understand life and its problems, we would today be living under conditions that would seem almost like Utopia. Most of our social and domestic problems would have been solved, and equally as important, our understanding and relations with the other peoples of the world would have, by now, brought about universal peace. Man would have a better understanding of his motives and actions, and would have learned to curb his primitive instincts for revenge and retaliation. He would, by now, know that wars of hate, aggression, and aggrandizement are only productive of more hate and more human suffering. The enlightened and completely emancipated man from the fears of a God and the dogma of hate and revenge would make him a brother to his fellow man. He would devote his energies to discoveries and inventions, which theology previously condemned as a defiance of God, but which have proved so beneficial to him. He would no longer be a slave to a God and live in cringing fear!”

WarSufferingHateEnergyFearPeaceLibertyProgressWasteRevengeTyrannyBrotherhoodDogmaAggressionBeneficialUtopiaDark AgesSeparation Of Church And StateIntellectual FreedomWastedWasteful
Book:An Atheist Manifesto
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“Europe, it is true, is a geographical and, within certain limits, an historical cultural conception. But the idea of Europe as an economic unit contradicts capitalist development in two ways. First of all there exist within Europe among the capitalist States – and will so long as these exist – the most violent struggles of competition and antagonisms, and secondly the European States can no longer get along economically without the non-European countries. ... At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. ... And if the idea of a European union in the economic sense has long been outstripped, this is no less the case in the political sense. .... Only were one suddenly to lose sight of all these happenings and manoeuvres, and to transfer oneself back to the blissful times of the European concert of powers, could one say, for instance, that for forty years we have had uninterrupted peace. This conception, which considers only events on the European continent, does not notice that the very reason why we have had no war in Europe for decades is the fact that international antagonisms have grown infinitely beyond the narrow confines of the European continent, and that European problems and interests are now fought out on the world seas and in the by-corners of Europe.”

PoliticsPeaceCapitalismEconomicsUtopiaEuropean UnionRosa Luxemburg
Book:Rosa Luxemburg Speaks
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“...feminism has to be absolutely utopian and unrealistic, far removed form any semblance of the world we're living in now. We have to hope for and envision something before agitating for it, rather than blithely giving up, and accepting the way things are. After all, utopian ideals are as ideological as the political foundations of the world we're currently living in. Above everything, feminism is a constant work in progress. We are all still learning.”

ProgressFeminismIdealsActivismUtopia
Book:Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race
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“I believe God has instilled in us a craving, a deep desire to run with Him on a fantastic adventure, yet many of us crawl along in life without even a glimpse of our hidden passion. There has to be a reason for living. There must be a Camelot, a hidden Utopia where we can rest from our personal campaigns. Fantasy opens our eyes to a better place, a shining city we do not yet know. And these stories provide a mental bridge to that city as we pursue horizons we could never distinguish with our physical eyes.”

KnowsBelieveReasonStoriesEyeRunningDesirePassionI BelieveCitiesFantasyAdventureShiningCampaignsPursueFantasticBridgesHorizonBelieve In GodGlimpseBetter PlaceCravingUtopiaCamelotDeep Desire
Author:Bryan Davis
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“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.”

MenLooksI CanRealEndsMomentsMillionsFantasyImagineGenerationsTerribleDramaHorrorEssentialsBenefitsInjusticeTrialsCrueltyRevolutionarySincerelyFuture GenerationUtopiaMassacresDeportation
Book:The World's Last Night: And Other Essays
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