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Utopianism Quotes

Browse 40 quotes about Utopianism.

Utopianism Quotes

“As [Isaiah] Berlin wrote to George Kennan in 1951, 'What we violently reject is ... the very idea that there are circumstances in which one has a right to get at, and shape the characters and souls of other men for purposes which these men, if they realized what we were doing, might reject.' The respect for individual liberty goes hand in hand with the recognition of human dignity as a fundamental principle and is incompatible with treating human beings as sheer material to be conditioned and shaped at will.”

LibertyHumanismModerationMarxismTotalitarianismAuthoritarianismPolitical TheoryUtopianism
Book:Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes
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“Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth. Once we begin to rely upon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the call of personal responsibilities, and with it, the responsibility of helping to advance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit submission to tribal magic. For those who have eaten from the tree of knowledge, paradise is lost. The more we try to return to tribal heroism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way, we must return to the beasts. It is an issue which we must face squarely, hard though it may be for us to do so. If we dream of a return to our childhood, if we are tempted to rely on others and so be happy, if we turn back from the task of carrying our cross, the cross of humaneness, of reason, of responsibility, if we lose courage and flinch from the strain, then we must try to fortify ourselves with a clear understanding of the simple decision before us. We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, courageously, using what reason we have, to plan for security and freedom.”

PoliticsFreedomMoralityCivilizationPolitical ScienceUtopianism
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies
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“Utopianism also finds a receptive audience among the society's disenchanted, disaffected, dissatisfied, and maladjusted who are unwilling or unable to assume responsibility for their own real or perceived conditions but instead blame their surroundings, 'the system,' and others. They are lured by the false hopes and promises of utopian transformation and the criticisms of the existing society, to which their connection is tentative or nonexistent. Improving the malcontent's lot becomes linked to the utopian cause. Moreover, disparaging and diminishing the successful and accomplished becomes an essential tactic. No one should be better than anyone else, regardless of the merits or values of his contributions. By exploiting human frailties, frustrations, jealousies, and inequities, a sense of meaning and self-worth is created in the malcontent's otherwise unhappy and directionless life. Simply put, equality in misery -- that is, equality of result or conformity -- is advanced as a just, fair, and virtuous undertaking. Liberty, therefore, is inherently immoral, except where it avails equality.”

InequalityUtopianismMalcontents
Book:Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America
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“If capitalist realism is so seamless, and if current forms of resistance are so hopeless and impotent, where can an effective challenge come from? A moral critique of capitalism, emphasizing the ways in which it leads to suffering, only reinforces capitalist realism. Poverty, famine and war can be presented as an inevitable part of reality, while the hope that these forms of suffering could be eliminated easily painted as naive utopianism. Capitalist realism can only be threatened if it is shown to be in some way inconsistent or untenable; if, that is to say, capitalism's ostensible 'realism' turns out to be nothing of the sort.”

PovertyCapitalismCharityUtopianismCapitalist Realism
Book:Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
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“And then," said Sarnac, "I remember that I made a prophecy. I made it - when did I make it? Two thousand years ago? Or two weeks ago? I sat in Fanny's little sitting-room, an old-world creature amidst her old-world furnishings, and I said that men and women would not always suffer as we were suffering then. I said that we were still poor savages, living only in the bleak dawn of civilisation, and that we suffered because we were under-bred, under-trained and darkly ignorant of ourselves, that the mere fact that we knew our own unhappiness was the promise of better things and that a day would come when charity and understanding would light the world so that men and women would no longer hurt themselves and one another as they were doing now everywhere, universally, in law and in restriction and in jealousy and in hate, all round and about the earth.”

UtopiaUtopianism
Book:The Dream
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“Conceive a world-society developed materially far beyond the wildest dreams of America. Unlimited power, derived partly from the artificial disintegration of atoms, partly from the actual annihilation of matter through the union of electrons and protons to form radiation, completely abolished the whole grotesque burden of drudgery which hitherto had seemed the inescapable price of civilization, nay of life itself. The vast economic routine of the world-community was carried on by the mere touching of appropriate buttons. Transport, mining, manufacture, and even agriculture were performed in this manner. And indeed in most cases the systematic co-ordination of these activities was itself the work of self-regulating machinery. Thus, not only was there no longer need for any human beings to spend their lives in unskilled monotonous labour, but further, much that earlier races would have regarded as highly skilled though stereotyped work, was now carried on by machinery. Only the pioneering of industry, the endless exhilarating research, invention, design and reorganization, which is incurred by an ever-changing society, still engaged the minds of men and women. And though this work was of course immense, it could not occupy the whole attention of a great world-community. Thus very much of the energy of the race was free to occupy itself with other no less difficult and exacting matters, or to seek recreation in its many admirable sports and arts. Materially every individual was a multi-millionaire, in that he had at his beck and call a great diversity of powerful mechanisms; but also he was a penniless friar, for he had no vestige of economic control over any other human being. He could fly through the upper air to the ends of the earth in an hour, or hang idle among the clouds all day long. His flying machine was no cumbersome aeroplane, but either a wingless aerial boat, or a mere suit of overalls in which he could disport himself with the freedom of a bird. Not only in the air, but in the sea also, he was free. He could stroll about the ocean bed, or gambol with the deep-sea fishes. And for habitation he could make his home, as he willed, either in a shack in the wilderness or in one of the great pylons which dwarfed the architecture even of the American age. He could possess this huge palace in loneliness and fill it with his possessions, to be automatically cared for without human service; or he could join with others and create a hive of social life. All these amenities he took for granted as the savage takes for granted the air which he breathes. And because they were as universally available as air, no one craved them in excess, and no one grudged another the use of them.”

PhilosophyTechnologyUtopiaUtopianism
Book:Last and First Men
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“The religious utopian hides his pride behind the mask of humility; he recognizes God alone; he does not recognize ministers or sacraments since he puts himself in place of both. He ministers his own religious needs and he consecrates his inner self as a place of worship more worthy of receiving God than the churches. He substitutes his own sentiments and emotions for doctrine, because doctrines are man-made speculations unable to comprehend God's essence. He considers the sacramental, ceremonial and generally institutional aspects of religion as rigid and expendable molds which are adequate for the unthinking who need strong sensations and impressions to sustain their faith. He, on the other hand, puts his trust in his own individual inspiration, strengthens his faith through direct and permanent contact with the divine and so rises as a pure spirit to the level of a "truer" religion. The secular utopian also displays excessive pride. He believes that societies of the past were based on error since they yielded to the political principle of organization and hierarchy. The goal of the utopian is to create a society in its pristine purity, as it were, unsullied by laws and magistrates, functioning through its members' natural good will and cooperativeness. Laws, institutions, symbols, flags, armies, disciplines, patriotic encouragement and the like will all be abolished because, for pure social beings, their inner motivation of social living - togetherness - is quite sufficient and because they would serve to anchor the citizens, bodily and emotionally, in the soil and reality of the State just as pomp and ceremony, rules and institutions anchor the faithful in religion.”

Utopianism
Book:Utopia, The Perennial Heresy
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“Utopia retains throughout its long history the basic form of the narrative of a journey. The traveler in space or time is an explorer who happens upon utopia. He (or, more recently, she) meets its people, usually at first its ordinary people, observes them at work and play, sees their dwellings and their cities... The traveler is, as are we, the more prepared to accept the validity and desirability of the general principles for having seen with his own eyes its effects in the daily life of its inhabitants.”

LiteratureUtopiaUtopianismUtopia In Literature
Book:Utopianism
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“Utopianism's equality is intolerant of diversity, uniqueness, debate, etc., for utopianism's purpose requires a singular focus. There can be no competing voices or causes slowing or obstructing society's long and righteous march. Utopianism relies on deceit, propaganda, dependence, intimidation, and force. In its more aggressive state, as the malignancy of the enterprise becomes more painful and its impossibility more obvious, it incites violence inasmuch as avenues for free expression and civil dissent are cut off. Violence becomes the individual's primary recourse and the state's primary response. Ultimately, the only way out is the state's termination.”

Utopianism
Book:Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America
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“Stalin and Kim made human idols of themselves because they believed, as utopian idealists always do, in the ultimate goodness of themselves and the unchallengeable rightness of their decisions. There was no higher power, and so there could be no higher law. If people disagreed with them, it was because those people were in some way defective--insane, malignant, or mercenary. The rulers could not tolerate actual religion, because they could not tolerate any rival authority or any rival source or judge of goodness, gratitude, and justice.”

CommunismTyrantsDictatorshipReligious IntoleranceStalinismStalinDictatorsUtopianismUtopian SocialismKim Jong Il
Author:Peter Hitchens
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“Imagine a nation comprised of California Hawaii Oregon and Washington. Imagine a country that is the most advanced in science and technology, and easily the most prosporous nation in the world. A nation saddled with no debt. A nation possessing all western seaports with regard to economic trade. So imagine a nation of great wealth and prosperity that is dedicated to a higher way for humanity. A way of peace for all humans, planetary protection and healing, advancement of science and technology. That is what we "utopian" types could easily visualize... perhaps we would call it Lemuria.....”

UtopiaUtopianismLemuria
Book:Angel Stories. Angelic Tales of the Universe. Tales 7 through 12
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“Of course, the Shtrakenzer bride, though perfect, was not suitable; Mrs. Shpilman knew that. Long before the maid came to say that nobody could find Mendel, that he had disappeared sometime in the course of the night, Mrs. Shilman has known that no degree of accomplishment, beauty, or fire in a girl would ever suit her son. But there was always a shortfall, wasn’t there? Between the match that the Holy One, blessed be He, envisioned and the reality of the situation under the chuppah. Between commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew.”

MarriageRealismJudaismUtopiaDeterminismZionismYiddishArranged MarriageUtopianism
Book:The Yiddish Policemen's Union
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“There were hundreds of worlds like it, most of them littered with the usual Elder Culture ruins, the usual secrets waiting to be unlocked. This one had been colonised by an atechnic cult sixty years ago. Maybe they were living the life of pastoral utopianism they’d planned; maybe they had descended into savagery and were roasting and eating prisoners of war captured in tribal wars fought with stone-tipped spears. No one knew nor cared.”

UtopianismPastoral
Book:Into Everywhere
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“All political ideals, that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of ‘higher’ values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls. It leads to Utopianism and Romanticism. We all feel certain that everybody would be happy in the beautiful, the perfect community of our dreams.”

HappinessFreedomUtopianism
Book:The Open Society and Its Enemies
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“It was assumed that entire societies could be transformed and changed in a relatively short span of time if only enough people were prepared to accept and follow the principles and priorities set by a vanguard in possession of those timeless standards. The only things that remained to be done, [Isaiah] Berlin wryly noted, was to eliminate all obstacles (human and material) to progress before the process of building the radiant future could begin in earnest. This could be done in one step through violence or gradually through persuasion, threats, reeducation, disenfranchisement, dispossession of property, relocation, coercion, blackmail, denunciation, and, if necessary, terror.”

ModerationMarxismExtremismAuthoritarianismUtopianismMonism
Book:Faces of Moderation: The Art of Balance in an Age of Extremes
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“A virulent form of utopianism has indeed afflicted the modern age, but its name is not Marxism. It is the crazed motion that a single global system known as the free market can impose itself on the most diverse cultures and economies and cure all their ills. The purveyors of this totalitarian fantasy are not to be found hiding scar-faced and sinisterly soft-spoken in underground bunkers like James Bond villains. They are to be seen dining at upmarket Washington restaurants and strolling on Sussex estates.”

CapitalismSocialismCommunismMarxismUtopiaUtopianism
Book:Why Marx Was Right
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“The environmentalist notion about a “Mother Earth” or “delicate balance in nature” is no more sophisticated or based on empirical evidence than is a belief in the “Garden of Eden”. All evidence points to a violently chaotic universe, where our “Mother Earth” is nothing buy a piece of phlegm spat out and being whirled around by our Sun. We are at the mercy of whatever catastrophe is unleashed upon our little piece of Sun hocker, and by no means living in some utopian conception of Eden.”

UtopiaEnvironmentalismMother EarthMother NatureUtopianismEnvironmental ValuesEcology And CapitalismDelicate BalanceEnvironmentalism As A Religion
Author:A.E. Samaan
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“What then, is "Western Maoism"--whitch captured a number of the European Left in the 1960s and 1970s--in light of the clarification outlined here? It is a curious amalgam of various bits and pieces of Mao's thought, from Mao Zedong Thought and the Maoism of the Cultural Revolution, and then reframed in terms of utopian tendencies inherent in Western Marxism.”

UtopianismAdventurismBook WorshipRevolutionary DefeatismUltra LeftismWestern Marxism
Author:Roland Theodore Boer
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