Quotessence
Home / Topics / Utopia Quotes

Utopia Quotes

Browse 386 quotes about Utopia.

Related topics

WorldPeopleHumansIfsThinkingDreamPoliticalEndsEarthIdeasMenWantBelieveKnowsMayPerfectShouldWayHas BeensPastRealityVisionDoeHeavenLongNeedsParadiseProgressSocialStatesTryingFactsFormInterestingLastsWould Be

Utopia Quotes

“Franz Kafka once said that happiness consists in having an ideal and not progressing towards it. If you did progress towards it, you'd be unhappy because you'd never be able to reach it. You can incrementally improve your life, but you never quite experience the glamour. You never quite get to your utopia, or whatever it is. And once you realize that you can be quite Buddhist about it, and say, "Well, okay, I'm just going to keep detached from it all."”

RealizingProgressOkayUnhappyBuddhistNever QuitGlamourUtopia
Author:Momus
Create image

“I love to be in New York. And I think anybody who's a designer, who says they're doing an urban collection, thinks about the streets of New York. I cannot do an urban collection thinking of Bangkok. Or Mexico. To me, it's totally instant, totally connected with what attracts me these days. But this resurgence of a modern, cool way of being dressed is something that stimulates me and is totally right for me. Even now I don't like to show something that is some futuristic utopia.”

ThinkingModernInstantDesignerUrbanUtopiaFuturistic
Author:Olivier Theyskens
Create image

“It's hard for us sophisticates to believe, but the people my parents worked for were good people. They were socialists of the heart. They were Scottish upper class. I don't think they had political theories in the way my lefty friends in New York do but they did all the things that socialists do. My mother was the Jewish cook from Vienna and they would say, "Come and have dinner with us." I spent weekends with them. Who does that? This is Utopia.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveHeartPoliticalMotherParentGood PeopleWeekendUtopiaScottish
Author:Lore Segal
Create image

“While the fictional realm as such allows for the obstacles of present-day politics to be altered, neglected, and negotiated at will, sci-fi seems to embody ideals, expectations, and fears of the future that are quite adequate for describing the Palestinian predicament. Somehow managing to fuse nostalgia and hopes for a better and more efficient future, sci-fi seems to lend itself to capturing the decades of Palestinian yearning for a utopia that almost seems dated by now.”

ExpectationsObstaclesNostalgiaYearningPalestinianNeglectedUtopia
Author:Larissa Sansour
Create image

“Anyone too undisciplined, too self-righteous or too self-centered to live in the world as it is has a tendency to idealize a world which ought to be. But no matter what political or religious direction such idealists choose, their visions always share one telling characteristic: in their utopias, heavens or brave new worlds, their greatest personal weakness suddenly appears to be a strength.”

WorldSelfMatterPoliticalHeavenReligiousVisionShareOughtWeaknessNo Matter WhatBraveTendenciesCharacteristicsNew WorldRighteousUtopiaSelf CenteredIdealistSelf RighteousBrave New WorldUndisciplined
Book:The Brothers K
Create image

“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.”

WorldWellsChildrenLittlesSchoolAdventureGrewHealthyBandGrew UpLibraryBeachCaliforniaLeagueParadiseFedsOrangeUtopiaGroveAfter SchoolLittle League
Book:Pacific Edge: Three Californias
Create image

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

WorldLooksDoeCountryHumanityProgressSeeingLandMapsSailUtopiaLandingRealisation
Book:Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis
Create image

“Eiffel saw his Tower in the form of a serious object, rational, useful; men return it to him in the form of a great baroque dream which quite naturally touches on the borders of the irrational ... architecture is always dream and function, expression of a utopia and instrument of a convenience.”

MenDreamFormSawsObjectsSeriousExpressionReturnFunctionInstrumentsArchitectureRationalBordersTowersIrrationalConvenienceUtopiaBaroqueEiffel
Book:The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies
Create image

“The priestess of Artemis took hold of her almost with the violence of a lover, and whisked her away into a languid ecstasy of reverie. She communicated her own enthusiasm to the girl, and kept her mind occupied with dreams, faery-fervid, of uncharted seas of glory on which her galleon might sail, undiscovered countries of spice and sweetness, Eldorado and Utopia and the City of God.”

MindCountryDreamMightGirlCitiesViolenceSeaLoversGloryEnthusiasmEcstasySailSweetnessUtopiaSpicesArtemisReverieUnchartedPriestessesCity Of God
Author:Aleister Crowley
Create image

“In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.”

WorldNeedsHas BeensPastFormKingsPromiseLawyerGravesDoctrinePriestsImaginaryUtopiaUtopianFuturisticImaginary WorldIgnorance In 1984
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
Create image

“The fall of one regime does not bring in a utopia. Rather, it opens the way for hard work and long efforts to build more just social, economic,and political relationships and the eradication of other forms of injustices and oppression.”

WayLongDoeHardFormPoliticalFallSocialChallengesEffortEconomicHard WorkInjusticeOppressionRegimesUtopiaInjustice And Oppression
Book:From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation
Create image

“It is interesting to note that the "sexual revolution" was sometimes portrayed as a communal utopia, whereas in fact it was simply another stage in the historical rise of individualism. As the lovely word "household" suggests, the couple and the family would be the last bastion of primitive communism in liberal society. The sexual revolution was to destroy these intermediary communities, the last to separate the individual from the market. The destruction continues to this day.”

SometimesFactsWould BeLastsIndividualCommunityInterestingStageRevolutionCoupleDestructionHistoricalNotesLovelyCommunismThis DayIndividualismHouseholdPrimitiveUtopiaSexual Revolution
Author:Michel Houellebecq
Create image

“I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now — and we're going to try our hands at it.”

PeopleThinkingWantTryingYearsMadeSaidHandsAbleNextWaitingSleepPlansSeeingGenerationsDyingPoliticianThousandTenConsciousTiredPatientCalmHearingPriestsThousand YearsWiserNext GenerationBe PatientUtopiaCautiousReformers
Book:Main Street
Create image

“No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. As their material conditions improve, men raise their sights and become discontented with power and possessions that once would have seemed beyond their wildest dreams. And even when the external world has granted all it can, there still remain the searchings of the mind and the longings of the heart.”

MenWorldGivingMindHeartStillsDreamConditionsMaterialsSightRaisesLongingSatisfactionPossessionGrantedUtopiaWildest Dreams
Book:Childhood’s End
Create image

“Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia. What we seek is more simply to improve the quality of human life while at the same time respecting the natural environment which sustains it: 'Not a heaven on earth but a better earth on earth.' This is not at all a timid agenda, far from it. The work ahead of us is enormous!”

ShouldHumansEarthPoliticalPoliticsHeavenNaturalPerfectQualityEnvironmentAimActivismEnormousHuman LifeAgendasUtopiaNatural EnvironmentHeaven On EarthPolitical Activism
Author:Paul Wellstone
Create image

“Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's Utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torment, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?”

IfsWorldFeelsShouldSoulWould BeScienceCertainLostSimpleEmotionMillionsConditionsLonelyIndependentFruitEdgesAcceptedImpulseEnjoymentTormentHypothesisUtopiaBargainsHideousClutchLost SoulsMorrisFourier
Book:The Will to Believe and Human Immortality
Create image

“And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a "new man" and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.”

PeopleMenDoneInspirationNamesHappenedAtheismMassMurderAtheistCommittedDeedsDenyIdeologyCommunistPotHostBloodyDisputesUtopiaIdeologicalAtrocitiesAtheisticMao
Author:Dinesh D'Souza
Create image

“Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before - that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment.”

ThinkingKnowsGivingHumansMomentsWould BeEarthHumanityChanceRaceKnownTechnologyPlanetsBlessedLifetimeFinalsOblivionUtopiaUtopianForefathersIndescribableKnow It AllRelaysRelay Races
Author:R. Buckminster Fuller
Create image