Utopian Quotes

• Although images of perfection in people's personal lives can cause unhappiness, images of perfect societies - utopian images - can cause monstrous evil. In fact, forcefully changing society to conform to societal images was the greatest cause of evil in the twentieth century.

  Dennis Prager

  People, Evil, Perfect

  FaceBook post by Dennis Prager from May 02, 2012

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian.

  Lionel Trilling

  Believe, Heart, Cynical

  "Partisan Review: 50th Anniversary Edition", ed. William Philips, 1985.

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil.

  Brian Aldiss

  Strong, Men, Ideas

  12 Copy quote

• Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world.

  H. G. Wells

  World, Vivid, Firsts

  H. G. Wells (2016). “A Modern Utopia”, p.23, H. G. Wells

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this one utopian principle - absolute busyness - then utopia and melancholy will come to coincide: an age without conflict will dawn, perpetually busy - and without consciousness.

  Gunter Grass

  Age, Dawn, Principles

  "From the Diary of a Snail". Book by Gunter Grass, www.theguardian.com. 1972.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.

  Gunter Grass

  Tails, Coins, Melancholy

  "From The Diary Of A Snail (On Stasis and Progress)". Book by Gunter Grass, 1972.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.

  Emma Goldman

  Change, Race, Vision

  Emma Goldman (1998). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Utopian movements produce dystopias.

  Dennis Prager

  Movement, Produce, Dystopia

  35 Copy quote

• I don't wish to defend everything that has been done in the name of Utopia. But I think many of the attacks misconceive its nature and function. As I have tried to suggest, utopia is not mainly about providing detailed blueprints for social reconstruction. Its concern with ends is about making us think about possible worlds. It is about inventing and imagining worlds for our contemplation and delight. It opens up our minds to the possibilities of the human condition.

  Hans Magnus Enzensberger

  Thinking, Names, Mind

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Oscar Wilde

  Doe, World, Maps

  "The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde".

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• ....This world needs Utopias as it needs fairy stories. It does not matter so much where we are going, as long as we are making consciously for some definite goal. And a Utopia, however strange or fanciful, is the only possible beacon upon the uncharted seas of the distant future.

  Hendrik Willem van Loon

  Sea, Fairy Stories, Long

  12 Copy quote

• 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”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'Divergent' was my utopian world. I mean, that wasn't the plan. I never even set out to write dystopian fiction, that's just what I had when I was finished. At the beginning, I was just writing about a place I found interesting and a character with a compelling story, and as I began to build the world, I realized that it was my utopia.

  Veronica Roth

  Writing, Character, Mean

  11 Copy quote

• In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash.

  John Berger

  Writing, People, Political

  7 Copy quote

• TV is sometimes accused of encouraging fantasies. Its real problem, though, is that it encourages-enforces, almost-a brute realism. It is anti-Utopian in the extreme. We're discouraged from thinking that, except for a few new products, there might be a better way of doing things.

  Bill McKibben

  Real, Thinking, Might

  Bill McKibben (1989). “The end of nature”, Random House Inc

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The trebling of the population in this small and impoverished country, flowing with milk and honey but not with sufficient water, rich in rocks and sand dunes but poor in natural resources and vital raw materials, has been no easy task: Indeed, practical men, with their eyes fixed upon things as they are, regarded it as an empty and insubstantial utopian dream.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Country, Dream, Eye

  16 Copy quote

• The utopian schemes of leveling and a community of goods,  are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the crown. These ideas are arbitrary, despotic, and, in our government unconstitutional.

  Samuel Adams

  Government, Ideas, Community

  24 Copy quote

• I shall speak of how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another... of the revulsion that follows one insight and precedes the next... of superabundance and surfeit. Of stasis in progress. And of myself, for whom melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin.

  Gunter Grass

  Progress, Tails, Coins

  "Diary of a Snail (On Stasis and Progress)". Book by Gunter Grass, 1972.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Literature, Might, Soil

  1850 The Scarlet Letter, ch.1.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• The World has become too dangerous for anything less than Utopia.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Inspirational, Motivational, World

  "Education Automation: Comprehensive Learning for Emergent Humanity".

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• The man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, ‘Limit yourself’; it is he who is truly the impractical utopian.

  Murray Rothbard

  Men, Gun, Hands

  115 Copy quote

• For example, you now look at pictures from 1968, they are hugely misleading in terms of standing in as an absolute image of the time. Because maybe two percent of the people looked the way that we now associate with that time. I was also aware that what I was aiming for is an idealized, utopian version of how people could be together. I found photography to be a very powerful tool because as long as it looks real, it is perceived as real.

  Wolfgang Tillmans

  Photography, Powerful, Real

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think if I were living in a utopian world, then it wouldn't be political commentary; it would be about daffodils.

  Emily Haines

  Thinking, Political, Would Be

  "Taking Measurements: An Interview with Metric". Interview With Devon Powers, www.popmatters.com. October 12, 2004.

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.

  Denise Levertov

  Quickness

  Denise Levertov, Peggy Rosenthal (2006). “Making Peace”, p.4, New Directions Publishing

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• Loving Your Enemies... Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this demand is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes it is love that will save our world and civilization; love even for our enemies.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Peace, Our World, Civilization

  8 Copy quote