Best 131 quotes in «utopia quotes» category

En el campo… En el campo… Me encantaba el campo. Quería estar lejos de las ciudades, lejos de la excitación. Sólo me apetecía tumbarme de espaldas bajo un árbol y leer un libro o dibujar, y dejar de preocuparme porque me asaltaran, dejar de llevar una faca o terminar casado con alguna fulana como una cabra. Así debía de ser el campo, pensé ensoñadoramente.

Europe, it is true, is a geographical and, within certain limits, an historical cultural conception. But the idea of Europe as an economic unit contradicts capitalist development in two ways. First of all there exist within Europe among the capitalist States – and will so long as these exist – the most violent struggles of competition and antagonisms, and secondly the European States can no longer get along economically without the non-European countries. ... At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. ... And if the idea of a European union in the economic sense has long been outstripped, this is no less the case in the political sense. .... Only were one suddenly to lose sight of all these happenings and manoeuvres, and to transfer oneself back to the blissful times of the European concert of powers, could one say, for instance, that for forty years we have had uninterrupted peace. This conception, which considers only events on the European continent, does not notice that the very reason why we have had no war in Europe for decades is the fact that international antagonisms have grown infinitely beyond the narrow confines of the European continent, and that European problems and interests are now fought out on the world seas and in the by-corners of Europe.

Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy.

Every dystopia is masked by a utopia.

HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute I thought, he's some mother's son just as Hector was, and aren't we women all sisters? If I killed him, I thought, wouldn't It be like killing family?Wouldn't it be making some other mother grieve? So I didn't kill him, but if I had, I might have saved Hector's child. Dead or damned, that's the choice we make. Either you men kill us and are honored for it, or we women kill you and are damned for it. Dead or damned. Women don't have to make choices like that in Hades. There is no love there, nothing to betray.

FUCK "UNITY"!! What a pathetic way of thinking. How arrogant of Progressives to think that my hopes and dreams mirror their hopes and dreams. What an absolute bore.... what an total lack of originality or individuality... I believe in individual liberty. I am an extremist on the topic of individual liberty, precisely because I value original thinking and original accomplishments. Fuck unity of purpose. Fuck collectivism. My life is not your life. I have my own path. Get out of my way.

From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia.

I am offered the Grand Inquisitor's choice. Will you choose freedom without happiness, or happiness without freedom? The only answer one can make, I think, is: No.

I’d likte to welcome you to the land of free, where healthy, wealthy, happy people contribute to the civilization under the protection of the rules of capitalism, laws of science and rights of universal suffrage.

I could try composing wonderful musical works, or day-long entertainment epics, but what would that do? Give people pleasure? My wiping this table gives me pleasure. And people come to a clean table, which gives them pleasure. And anyway" - the man laughed - "people die; stars die; universes die. What is any achievement, however great it was, once time itself is dead? Of course, if all I did was wipe tables, then of course it would seem a mean and despicable waste of my huge intellectual potential. But because I choose to do it, it gives me pleasure. And," the man said with a smile, "it's a good way of meeting people. So where are you from, anyway?

If I was the dictator, with my profound understanding of Marx’s real intent, and my universal benevolent compassion, uncontaminated by any proclivity toward darkness or sin, I would bring on the socialist Utopia.

...I don't know where a utopia is supposed to be, or where one could be found. I sometimes think that it is the place where fear and doubt end with the realization that around you is everything you need, and there is nothing else to find.

I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.

If Utopia is not a place, but a people, then we must choose carefully, for the world is about to change, and in our story, Rapture was just the beginning. -Eleanore Lamb

If you do not want to stop the wheels of progress; if you do not want to go back to the Dark Ages; if you do not want to live again under tyranny, then you must guard your liberty, and you must not let the church get control of your government. If you do, you will lose the greatest legacy ever bequeathed to the human race—intellectual freedom. Now let me tell you another thing. If all the energy and wealth wasted upon religion—in all of its varied forms—had been spent to understand life and its problems, we would today be living under conditions that would seem almost like Utopia. Most of our social and domestic problems would have been solved, and equally as important, our understanding and relations with the other peoples of the world would have, by now, brought about universal peace. Man would have a better understanding of his motives and actions, and would have learned to curb his primitive instincts for revenge and retaliation. He would, by now, know that wars of hate, aggression, and aggrandizement are only productive of more hate and more human suffering. The enlightened and completely emancipated man from the fears of a God and the dogma of hate and revenge would make him a brother to his fellow man. He would devote his energies to discoveries and inventions, which theology previously condemned as a defiance of God, but which have proved so beneficial to him. He would no longer be a slave to a God and live in cringing fear!

If your political theory requires humanity to "evolve", then you do not have a theory.... you have a dream.

I marvel at the placidity of the Utopian who imagines that man is perfectible. There is no denying that the human creature is born selfish, abusive, vile. Just look around you and see. Society cynical and ferocious, the humble heckled and pillaged by the rich traffickers in necessities. Everywhere the triumph of the mediocre and unscrupulous, everywhere the apotheosis of crooked politics and finance. And you think you can make any progress against a stream like that? No, man has never changed. His soul was corrupt in the days of Genesis and is not less rotten at present. Only the form of his sins varies. Progress is the hypocrisy which refines the vices.

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.....

In a world of true abundance you shouldn't have to work to justify your life.

In a society without anguish, it is easy to ignore death,” says one of them. However, and this is the real condemnation of our society, the anguish of death is a luxury that is felt far more by the idler than by the worker, who is stifled by his own occupation. But every kind of socialism is Utopian, most of all scientific socialism. Utopia replaces God by the future. Then it proceeds to identify the future with ethics; the only values are those which serve this particular future. For that reason Utopias have almost always been coercive and authoritarian. Marx, in so far as he is a Utopian, does not differ from his frightening predecessors, and one part of his teaching more than justifies his successors.

I’m just an apprentice, stuck between these borrowed first and last breaths that I was given, drinking water of life, and chasing the fire of knowledge, and waiting to mingle with my eternal and faithful love, earth.

Impossible? Utopic? Sure! But for how long? Can any human endeavor be eternally impossible or utopic ? A time factor should be integrated to every affirmation of utopia, or else the people affirming that would only be affirming that they are not the ones who can make it happen.

Man's Utopian dreams get circumvented through compromise and disappointment into a tolerable reality.

In future utopia will need to hurry to keep up with reality.

Isn't all politics about revenge, mostly?" "No, it's about doing good." "But your good is my bad. Your utopia is my dystopia.

It may be that the best we can hope for when it comes to utopias is that they be held at arm's length and regarded as aesthetic constructions, in which various proportions are neatly worked out, contradictions eliminated, and outside intrusions minimized. They are fictions, artifacts of culture. And we should be wary if they ever become much more.

It's tempting to ask why if you fed your neighbors during the time of the earthquake and fire, you didn't do so before or after.

It was both terrifying and glorious in it's intensity. It was love.

La utopía está en el horizonte. Camino dos pasos, ella se aleja dos pasos y el horizonte se corre diez pasos más allá. ¿Entonces para qué sirve la utopía? Para eso, sirve para caminar.

...I take as a point of departure the possibility and desirability of a fundamentally different form of society--call it communism, if you will--in which men and women, freed from the pressures of scarcity and from the insecurity of everyday existence under capitalism, shape their own lives. Collectively they decide who, how, when, and what shall be produced.

It is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination.

It’s more like he was an ant in the land of elephants. Nobody would notice his presence, no matter how much noise he might make.

Ma gli strumenti che create voi in realtà producono bisogni di socialità innaturalmente estremi. Nessuno ha davvero bisogno del numero di contatti che fornite voi. Non porta a nessun miglioramento. Non è nutriente. È come le merendine. Sai come le studiano? Determinano con scientifica precisione di quanto sale e quanti grassi hanno bisogno per farti continuare a mangiare. Tu non hai fame, non senti il bisogno di mangiare, quello che hai davanti non ti stuzzica, ma continui a mangiare queste calorie vuote. Ecco quello che spacciate voi. La stessa cosa. Un numero incalcolabile di calorie vuote, il loro equivalente digitale e sociale.

Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of transportation. Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement.

No dreaming may stand still, for this bodes no good. But if it becomes a dreaming ahead, then its cause appears quite differently and excitingly alive. The dim and weakening features, which may be characteristic of mere yearning, disappears; and then yearning can show what it really is able to accomplish.

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger. Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions. There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not. You shall not deny the Stranger. They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. But the man that is shall shadow The man that pretends to be.

Now, this was a combination that she wouldn’t dare to dream of, even in her worst nightmare.

Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom—that the current economic and political system is the only possible one—the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone’s blueprint? It’s not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called “capitalism,” figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin.

Not until the creation and maintenance of decent conditions of life for all people are recognized and accepted as a common obligation of all people and all countries - not until then shall we, with a certain degree of justification, be able to speak of humankind as civilized.

Num mundo perfeito isento de erros e horrores não escrevo crítica social nem manifesto político, eu escrevo apenas beleza.

Rakyat yang nasionalis hendaknya belajar menghemat energi. Pemimpin dan pemerintahan yang nasionalis hendaknya memikirkan cara-cara penghematan, bukan mengeksploitas sisa sumber daya alam yang kita miliki. Kembangkan sistem transportasi massal yang memadai, sehingga jumlah kendaraan di jalan raya berkurang. Dengan sendirinya pemakaian bahan bakar akan berkurang. Hentikan pembangunan menara-menara perkantoran dan apartemen-apartemen tinggi di perkotaan. Biarlah penghijauan di kota-kota besar tetap terpelihara. Pembangunan di daerah-daerah terpencil lebih diperhatikan. Biarlah orang di desa mendapatkan pekerjaan di desanya sendiri. Sehingga mereka tidak perlu menambah beban metropolis. Pembangunan harus merata, harus horizontal, tidak vertikal.

Peace ought not be regarded the height of civilization, else like barbarians we forever battle for peace.

People, imperfect and corruptible are society's building blocks. Political theories evading this reality are a catastrophe in waiting.

Perhaps every society is a utopia when you fail to peel up all the layers and look at what's underneath

People needed proof that Utopia was nothing more than a theory, an illusion read in fictional stories.

Personally I know only one person who wrote about utopia. Afterwards he was executed. I suppose it's not my genre.

Reality is what people who lack vision see.

She shook her head. "It sounds suspiciously like Nirvana." "What's wrong with that?" "Pure Spirit, one hundred percent proof—that's a drink that only the most hardened contemplation guzzlers indulge in. Bodhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love and work." "This is better," Will insisted. "You mean, it's more delicious. That's why it's such an enormous temptation. The only temptation that God could succumb to. The fruit of the ignorance of good and evil. What heavenly lusciousness, what a supermango! God had been stuffing Himself with it for billions of years. Then all of a sudden, up comes Homo sapiens, out pops the knowledge of good and evil. God had to switch to a much less palatable brand of fruit. You've just eaten a slice of the original supermango, so you can sympathize with Him." A chair creaked, there was a rustle of skirts, then a series of small busy sounds that he was unable to interpret. What was she doing? He could have answered that question by simply opening his eyes. But who cared, after all, what she might be doing? Nothing was of any importance except this blazing uprush of bliss and understanding. "Supermango to fruit of knowledge — I'm going to wean you," she said, "by easy stages.

She liked who she was becoming, despite the pain and frustration it brought.

She said all a body would have to do there [Heaven] was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever.