quotations about Utopia
Utopia gets a bad rap. If someone calls you or your idea "utopian," they usually mean it as an insult, a synonym for naïve and unrealistic. But everyone should envision an ideal world. Even if you doubt your utopia is attainable, it can serve as a useful thought experiment. Imagine a really good world, and imagine how we can get there. All progress begins with such wishful thinking.
JOHN HORGAN
"What's your utopia?", The Stute, April 28, 2017
The world has become too dangerous for anything less than utopias.
JOHN R. PIATT
New York Times, September 2, 1969
In the next few years the struggle will not be between utopia and reality, but between different utopias, each trying to impose itself on reality ... we can no longer hope to save everything, but ... we can at least try to save lives, so that some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible.
ALBERT CAMUS
Between Hell and Reason
The problem I have with socialist utopias is there's some kind of committees trying to soften outcomes for people. I think that imposes models of outcomes for other people's lives. So in a spiritual sense there's some bit of libertarian in me. But the critical thing for me is moderation. And if you let that go far you do end up with a winner-take-all society that ultimately crushes everybody even worse.
JARON LANIER
"Jaron Lanier: The Internet Destroyed the Middle Class", Salon, May 12, 2013
Utopian speculations ... must come back into fashion. They are a way of affirming faith in the possibility of solving problems that seem at the moment insoluble. Today even the survival of humanity is a utopian hope.
NORMAN O. BROWN
Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History
Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.
KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
Pacific Edge
The political experiments of the 20th century tell us all we need to know: utopias should be regarded not as serious political interventions but as a kind of social poetry.
RICHARD KING
"Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There: 21st century capitalism", The Australian, April 15, 2017
The 1939 fair was conceived by what might be called practical utopians. That is, it was an enclosed space where new and better modes of life could be shown to be possible and workable. It was as much prescription as prediction. Social theorists, businessmen, and academics were recruited to educate the public in the industrialized, communitarian, engineered world that was sure to come--the world of tomorrow, as the slogans promised.
JOHN CROWLEY
"Inside Every Utopia Is a Dystopia", Boston Review, April 20, 2017
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.
EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Visions of Utopia
Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.
ALBERT CAMUS
Between Hell and Reason
The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
Personally I know only one person who wrote about utopia. Afterwards he was executed. I suppose it's not my genre.
ALEXANDER ZALAN
Pavilion of Thoughts
If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until "justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church, December 5, 1955
Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision?
ROBERT NOZICK
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
We would not be discussing "utopian" ideas at all had not our own system been recently and violently revealed as delusional in certain key respects.
RICHARD KING
"Utopia for Realists: And How We Can Get There: 21st century capitalism", The Australian, April 15, 2017
A philosophy untouched by the shadows on the wall can only yield a sterile utopia.
MICHAEL J. SANDEL
Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?
Utopian thinking is not merely futile, it is also profoundly immoral since it contradicts the structure of man's thought and action in its applicability to the world. Since it misleads man, it is an ultimately irresponsible doctrine.
THOMAS MOLNAR
The Decline of the Intellectual