Utopian Quotes - Page 8

• Looking back, nothing seems so simple than a utopian vision realised.

  Wernher von Braun

  Simple, Vision, Seems

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• Force when aggressively applied is "violence" and is, therefore, morally unjustifiable, but when it is used in the furtherance of a legitimate cause, it has its moral justification. The elimination of force at all costs in Utopian.

  Bhagat Singh

  Cost, Violence, Causes

  Bhagat Singh (1986). “Selected writings of Shaheed Bhagat Singh”

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• [Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams - dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society - in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science.... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.

  Richard Rorty

  Dream, Country, Law

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• Almost without exception, everything society has considered a social advance has been prefigured first in some utopian writing.

  David Cooperrider

  Writing, Firsts, Social

  Suresh Srivastva, David L. Cooperrider, Case Western Reserve University (1990). “Appreciative management and leadership: the power of positive thought and action in organizations”, Jossey-Bass Inc Pub

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• In my bright, utopian future world, they will hand out college educations like cups of water at the end of the L.A. Marathon.

  Henry Rollins

  College, Hands, Water

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• Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.

  John Ralston Saul

  Jobs, Servant Of God, Might

  John Ralston Saul (1999). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

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• What does interest me is how difficult my culture seems to find it to look the dark side of life directly in the eye. It seems to me that if we look back at mediaeval culture, for example, we see a society which faces the reality of death and pain and limitation, because it has to. Our society, which is progressive and technological and seems to have a slightly fanatical utopian edge to it, gets very uncomfortable when anybody highlights the dark side of humanity, or the world we have built, or what we are doing to the rest of life on Earth.

  Paul Kingsnorth

  Pain, Eye, Dark

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Either we abandon the utopian globalism of open borders and 'ally-ally-in-free' immigration or we lose the war on terrorism and our freedoms with it.

  Pat Buchanan

  War, Allies, Immigration

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• They [Rappites] were moving from Southern Indiana to Pennsylvania, where they had originally settled when they came from Germany. They were looking for someone who wanted to buy a pre-built town, which wouldn't have been appropriate for any kind of normal settlement. That's when Robert Owen [Welsh industrialist and utopian socialist] buys the village and founds New Harmony.

  Christine Jennings

  Moving, Southern, Village

  Source: therumpus.net

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• We act, though, not under a utopian illusion that you or I or anyone or everyone together can rid this world of pain and suffering. That responsibility belongs to the resurrected Christ, and he will do it when he returns. But until that day, we do with an undivided heart whatever God calls us to do.

  David Platt

  Pain, Responsibility, Heart

  Source: blog.vyrso.com

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• Most of the utopian community ideas actually are religious. They're based more on the idea of the monastery than the commune.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Religious, Ideas, Community

  Source: www.heavenonearthdocumentary.com

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• Here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.

  Tony Kushner

  Dream, Expression, People

  "Tony Kushner, Radical Pragmatist". Interview with Ben Greenman, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2003.

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• It's not Utopian to believe that we can create a global registry of financial assets so we know who owns what in different countries.

  Thomas Piketty

  Country, Believe, Different

  "Inequality will worsen in America unless… Piketty’s Rx". Interview with Paul Solman, www.pbs.org. May 12, 2014.

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• To want a job that exercises a man's capacities in an enterprise useful to society, is utopian anarcho-syndicalism; it is labor invading the domain of management. No labor leader has entertained such a thought in our generation. Management has the "sole prerogative" to determine the products.

  Paul Goodman

  Jobs, Exercise, Men

  Paul Goodman (2011). “Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society”, p.41, New York Review of Books

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• Militarists say that to gain peace we must prepare for war. I think we get what we prepare for. If we want a world where peace is valued, we must teach ourselves to believe that peace is not a ‘utopian vision’ but a real responsibility that must be worked for each and every day in small and large ways. Any one of us can contribute to building a world where peace and justice prevail.

  Jody Williams

  Real, War, Believe

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• There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated... To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

  Edward Abbey

  Distance, Interesting, Forever

  "The Journey Home : Some Words in Defense of the American West" by Edward Abbey, (p. 205), 1977.

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• The Venus Project is neither Utopian nor Orwellian, nor does it reflect the dreams of impractical idealists. Instead, it presents attainable goals requiring only the intelligent application of what we already know. The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves.

  Jacque Fresco

  Dream, Intelligent, Goal

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• I have no notions of a perfect society, I don’t know what that means. I know we can do much better than what we’ve got, I’m no utopian, I’m not a humanist that would like to see everybody living in warmth and harmony: I know that if we don’t live that way, we’ll kill each other and destroy the Earth.

  Jacque Fresco

  Mean, Perfect, Earth

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• It's odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian, don't hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and most entertainingly, to "rid the world of evil-doers.

  Arundhati Roy

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

  Arundhati Roy (2006). “Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire”, p.133, Penguin Books India

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