Utopia Quotes - Page 7

• When communism failed, it wasn't a good idea that had gone wrong, it was a bad idea that had been sustained with incredible determination in the face of all the commonsense arguments, and at the cost of 20 million lives at least, in Russia, to build the socialist Utopia.

  Martin Amis

  Determination, Russia, Ideas

  "New New Yorker Martin Amis Talks Terrorism, Pornography, Idyllic Brooklyn and American Decline". Interview with David Wallace-Wells, www.vulture.com. July 22, 2012.

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• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Country, Land, Humanity

  Oscar Wilde (1997). “Collected Works of Oscar Wilde: The Plays, the Poems, the Stories and the Essays Including De Profundis”, p.1051, Wordsworth Editions

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• In a utopia you want to win matches by several goals and by playing a wonderful brand of football. But that's utopia.

  Stuart Pearce

  Football, Winning, Goal

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• The Fundamental Principle that governs - or ought to govern -human affairs if we wish to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or pointless utopias, is negotiation.

  Umberto Eco

  Wish, Principles, Fundamentals

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• To be ruthless requires belief that our life on earth is but a brief prelude to an afterlife, or a temporary sacrifice before some utopia can be instituted.
  Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

  Eric Hoffer

  Moving, Sacrifice, Skills

  1955 The Passionate State of Mind.

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• 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?

  William James

  Lonely, Independent, Science

  William James (2012). “The Will to Believe and Human Immortality”, p.133, Courier Corporation

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• 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.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Atheist, Inspiration, Men

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• The president's dream of a worldwide liberal utopia is going to undermine the security of the United States.

  Peter King

  Dream, President, United States

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• The suburbs have always been like an American version of utopia and a reflection of their hopes and fears. Erika's version of American suburban utopia - which I am renaming the outer ring - is a diverse place, with affordable housing, the possibility for people to have small businesses, which is more realistic in the outer ring than in the city with its huge costs, decent public transportation and the ability to access art and cultural events. That's my dream for America.

  Erika M. Anderson

  Dream, Art, Reflection

  Source: thequietus.com

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• I love playing. If it was down to just that, it would be utopia.

  Jimmy Page

  Would Be, Ifs

  "The Durable Led Zeppelin". Interview with Cameron Crowe, www.rollingstone.com. March 13, 1975.

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• Only from the perspective of such a utopia is it possible to use the concepts of pessimism and optimism with full justification: an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise.

  Milan Kundera

  Thinking, Numbers, Optimism

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• To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.

  Adam Smith

  Absurd, Should, Britain

  Adam Smith, David Buchanan (1817). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: With Notes, and an Additional Volume”, p.213

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• Beyond Bookchin”, David Watson, of Fifth Estate, argues that aboriginal society represents a viable Utopia. He quotes favourably the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins; “We are inclined to think of hunters and gatherers as poor because they don’t have anything, perhaps better to think of them for that reason as free.

  Marshall Sahlins

  Thinking, Hunters, Arguing

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• Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited. What a Utopia! What a paradise this region would be.

  John Adams

  Religious, Book, Law

  John Adams (2004). “The Portable John Adams”, p.3, Penguin

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• I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.

  Marguerite Young

  Believe, Desire, Obsession

  Marguerite Young (1999). “Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs”, Knopf

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• Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.

  Will Durant

  Christian, Rome, Perspective

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• We are not asked to subscribe to any utopia or to believe in a perfect world just around the corner. We are asked to be patient with necessarily slow and groping advance on the road forward, and to be ready for each step ahead as it become practicable. We are asked to equip ourselves with courage, hope, readiness for hard work, and to cherish large and generous ideals.

  Emily Greene Balch

  Believe, Hard Work, Perfect

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• Utopia is the grotesque en rose, the need to associate happiness - that is, the improbable - with becoming, and to coerce an optimistic, aerial vision to the point where it rejoins its own source: the very cynicism it sought to combat. In short, a monstrous fantasy.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Optimistic, Rose, Vision

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Please remember one lesson of the 20th century. One cannot force happiness, impose happiness on nations by imposing any kind of utopia on others. The Communist model of society was a kind of imposed utopia for which the Russian people in particular paid a great price. Still, sometimes we see that attempts are being made to impose some other kind of model on the entire world - maybe a Westernized or Americanized model... This is not the way to go because this can only create conflict.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  People, World, Lessons

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• I have a feeling-as compelling as a religious conviction-that if industry will constantly pass on to the worker and the customer all the savings of labor-saving machinery and invention, rather than siphon them off into the pools of watered securities, it will by that process keep distribution and production in balance and go as far toward Utopia as our poor human natures will go or be driven.

  Samuel B. Pettengill

  Religious, Feelings, Balance

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• Writers like Aldous Huxley and George Orwell have imagined the sort of scientific utopia which is coming to pass, but already their nightmare fancies are hopelessly out of date. A vast, air-conditioned, neon-lighted, glass-and-chromium broiler-house begins to take shape, in which geneticists select the best stocks to fertilise, and watch over the developing embryo to ensure that all possibilities of error and distortion are eliminated.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Errors, Glasses, Air

  Malcolm Muggeridge (2005). “Seeing Through the Eye: Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith”, p.109, Ignatius Press

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• Gargantua, at the age of four hundred four score and forty- four years begat his son Pantagruel, from his wife, named Badebec, daughter of the King of the Amaurotes in Utopia, who died in child-birth: because he was marvelously huge and so heavy that he could not come to light without suffocating his mother.

  Francois Rabelais

  Death, Daughter, Mother

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• Political utopias are a form of nostalgia for an imagined past projected onto the future as a wish.

  Michael Ignatieff

  Past, Political, Wish

  Michael Ignatieff (2015). “The Needs of Strangers”, p.107, Picador

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• The system - the American one, at least - is a vast and noble experiment. It has been polestar and exemplar for other nations. But from kindergarten until she graduates from college the girl is treated in it exactly like her brothers. She studies the same subjects, becomes proficient at the same sports. Oh, it is a magnificent lore she learns, education for the mind beyond anything Jane Austen or Saint Theresa or even Mrs. Pankhurst ever dreamed. It is truly Utopian. But Utopia was never meant to exist on this disheveled planet.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Girl, Sports, Education

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

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• There are no utopia jobs on this earth, .. There's nobody out there that can say, 'I've got the ideal job and there are no problems.' If your self worth is based on what other people think of you, you're in trouble. My self worth is not based on them. My self worth is based on my faith, how I treat others, what I'm doing right for this program and these kids and this coaching staff. Other than that, I understand you're not going to please everybody.

  Chan Gailey

  Jobs, Kids, Thinking

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