UTOPIA QUOTES II
quotations about 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.
KIRA SALAK
Four Corners: A Journey into the Heart of Papua New Guinea
If utopia is hoped for, then it must indeed be set in the future; but if it is merely the expression of desire, or a criticism of existing conditions, then this is not necessary.
RUTH LEVITAS
The Concept of Utopia
Nothing, not even a Utopia, can necessarily make the pursuit of happiness a successful one that ends in capture. The best society can merely allow every individual to flourish in the pursuit.
DANIEL NETTLE
Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
The newspapers of utopia ... would be terribly dull.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
2001: A Space Odyssey
Idealists and reformers all become executioners in their turn. The road to utopia ends with the steps of the scaffold, the endless moment of the guillotine.
GRANT MORRISON
The Invisibles, Vol. 1: Say You Want a Revolution
Utopias are presented for our inspection as a critique of the human state. If they are to be treated as anything but trivial exercises of the imagination. I suggest there is a simple test we can apply.... We must forget the whole paraphernalia of social description, demonstration, expostulation, approbation, condemnation. We have to say to ourselves, "How would I myself live in this proposed society? How long would it be before I went stark staring mad?"
WILLIAM GOLDING
address to Les Anglicistes, Lille, France, "Utopias and Antiutopias", February 13, 1977
Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.
ROBERT NOZICK
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
In a congested metropolis of four million people ... true utopia is finding oneself alone, with space to breathe.
MICHAEL GREEN
"Los Angeles Cinema and the Utopia of La La Land", Bright Lights Film Journal, May 4, 2017
The modesty of mythology deserves to be commended; the scenes there are laid at a distance; it is once upon a time, in the days of yore, and in the land of Utopia.
R. BENTLEY
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", Red Emma Speaks
But the Modern Utopia must not be static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent state but as a hopeful stage, leading to a long ascent of stages. Nowadays we do not resist and overcome the great stream of things, but rather float upon it. We build now not citadels, but ships of state.
H. G. WELLS
A Modern Utopia
Inside every utopia is a dystopia striving to get out. World-changing plans to bring all human life and activity under beneficent control devolve inevitably into regimentation and compulsion. Edenic life-affirming communes descend into chaos and waste. Our presently evolving techutopia has barely reached its peak, and yet in it this horror-movie process has already begun: information must be free, and so lies and manipulations proliferate; common human connections are degraded; limits on power and self-dealing erode. Inequality increases with differential access. And all this in less than a single generation.
JOHN CROWLEY
"Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia", Boston Review, April 20, 2017
It is as a description of a possible way of life in human terms that utopia acquires its distinctive character, developing the nuances that generate expectations about its potential as a mobilizing force. Therefore, utopia is based on a description of something that does not exist, as an exercise in imagination unrelated to the reality of what "is," but, although not immediately connected to the reality of what "is," it is, nonetheless, related to reality as a projection of what "should be." It is this intrinsic allusion to what "should be" that inevitably binds utopia to reality: not to instantly verifiable reality, but to the attempt to overcome it on the basis of the advent of a new reality that could and should come into force.
ALEXANDRE FRANCO DE SÁ
"From Modern Utopias to Contemporary Uchronia", Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought
One persistent strand in utopian thinking, as we have often mentioned, is the feeling that there is some set of principles obvious enough to be accepted by all men of good will, precise enough to give unambiguous guidance in particular situations, clear enough so that all will realize its dictates. and complete enough to cover all problems which actually arise. Since I do not assume that there are such principles, I do not presume that the political realm will whither away. The messiness of the details of a political apparatus and the details of how it is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple utopian scheme.
ROBERT NOZICK
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Grey Eminence
The ground-root folly of this piteous philanthropy
is thinking to distribute indivisibles,
and make equality in things incommensurable:
forged under such delusions, all Utopias
are castles in the air or counsels of despair.
ROBERT BRIDGES
The Testament of Beauty
Utopia is, in and of itself, an evidence of finitude: but not of finitude understood as simple limitation; on the contrary, of finitude insofar as the finite being exists precisely at its own limit, where it opens itself to the unlimited, to the simultaneously active and passive power of an unlimitation.
JEAN-LUC NANCY
"In Place of Utopia", Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought
Utopia is not something that we have to produce, that we have to achieve. Rather, utopia is already here--and should be defended.
BORIS GROYS
"Art, Technology, and Humanism", e-flux, May 2017
The origin of utopia, therefore, goes back to the allusion to another place on earth where it would be possible to create a different way of living. Utopia is thus linked to a representation based on the division of the globe into separate spaces, each of them subject to a distinct type of law and order. In this specific sense, utopia is an essentially modern theoretical construction, a product of the division of space that arose with Europe's expansion overseas and, in particular, the discovery of America.
ALEXANDRE FRANCO DE SÁ
"From Modern Utopias to Contemporary Uchronia", Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought
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 any consciousness.
GÜNTER GRASS
The Diary of a Snail