And Utopia Quotes

Captain Black knew he was a subversive because he wore eyeglasses and used words like panacea and utopia, and because he disapproved of Adolf Hitler, who had done such a great job of combating unAmerican activities in Germany. ~ Joseph Heller

Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you.

1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master's whims. He is often cruelly beaten, called out in the middle of the night, and so on.

2. The master is kindlier and beats the slave only for stated infractions of his rules (not fulling the work quota, and so on). He gives the slave some free time.

3. The master has a group of slave, and he decides how things are to be allocated among them on nice grounds, taking into account their needs, merit, and so on.

4. The master allows the slave four days on their own and requires them to work only three days a week on his land. The rest of the time is their own.

5. The master allows his slaves to go off and work in the city (or anywhere they wish) for wages. He also retains the power to recall them to the plantation if some emergency threatens his land; and to raise or lower the three-sevenths amount required to be turned over to him. He further retains the right to restrict the slaves from participating in certain dangerous activities that threaten his financial return, for example, mountain climbing, cigarette smoking.

6. The master allows all of his 10,000 slaves, except you, to vote, and the joint decision is made by all of them. There is open discussion, and so forth, among them, and they have the power to determine to what use to put wh ~ Robert Nozick

I hold to nothing but envisioning international peace and utopia. We all have many more things in common than not. ~ Roseanne Barr

Each of us is armed with this touchstone of actuality; by applying it we decide that this sorry world of ours is actual and Utopia is a dream. As our individual consciousnesses are different, so our touchstones are different; but fortunately they all agree in their indication of actuality - or at any rate those which agree are in sufficient majority to shut the others up in lunatic asylums. ~ Arthur Stanley Eddington

Robert Nozick [a Havard philosopher, famous for his book "Anarchy, State and Utopia"] defined revenge as delivering the message that you know what someone has done, and it doesn't involve hurting them or doing anything to them beyond that. It's just delivering the message that their crime has been noted not just by its victims, because the victim might be dead, but by another who has a different moral view and will challenge the perpetrator's view. ~ Errol Morris

I think that there is always a part of utopia in any romantic relationship. ~ Pedro Almodovar

The world needs more laws. I say this only because I believe the world needs more lawyers. If everybody was a lawyer, there'd be no unemployment, because the economy would be like a great lawsuit factory. Farmers in this utopia wouldn't raise crops, they'd raise suspicion. ~ Jarod Kintz

Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.

The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)

Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.

Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--t ~ David Mitchell

Particularly during the late 1960s, a large number of American skyjackers earnestly believed that Fidel Castro's Cuba was an egalitarian, post-racial utopia. ~ Brendan I. Koerner

Communism is Utopia, that is nowhere. It is the avatar of all our religious eschatologies: the coming of the Messiah, the second coming of Christ, nirvana. It is not a historical prospect, but a current mythology. Socialism, by contrast, is a realizable historical system which may one day be instituted in the world. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein

Complacency is the enemy, Mycroft, not xenophobia. An old phoenix needs burning ~ Ada Palmer

It's wrong to deprive someone else of a pleasure so that you can enjoy one yourself, but to deprive yourself of a pleasure so that you can add to someone else's enjoyment is an act of humanity by which you always gain more than you lose. ~ Thomas More

Abandon all hopes of utopia - there are people involved. ~ Clayton Cramer

To know oneself is to disbelieve utopia. ~ Michael Novak

Upbuilding is necessary for the uplifting of our soul ... Indonesia must be a strong country packed with factories. This is our utopia. ~ Sukarno

Broken people have an irresistible urge to try to 'fix' the world. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Reality is what people who lack vision see. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

But anyone who deliberately tries to get himself elected to a public office is permanently disqualified from holding one. ~ Thomas Moore

Who else but utopians could make utopia? ~ Dave Eggers

Who would want the socialist Utopia? Especially if you were at all artistic - you want all those inequalities, because that's what makes life interesting. ~ Martin Amis

The best dress for walking is nakedness. ~ Colin Fletcher

I believe that he who sows utopia will reap reality. ~ Carlo Petrini

The Revolutionary's Utopia, which in appearance represents a complete break with the past, is always modeled on some image of the Lost Paradise, of a legendary Golden Age ... All utopias are fed from the source of mythology; the social engineers' blueprints are merely revised editions of the ancient text. ~ Arthur Koestler

There is no place in the world where nobody dies. There is no place where nobody is hungry, or nobody hurts. That place is only in our imagination. But if we get our heads around it, we can go a little way toward making this real place more like that imaginary place. They call that place Utopia. ~ Chris Weitz

When planning the new Utopia, be sure to take the emotions into account. ~ Marty Rubin

The crimes of religion pale in comparison to those of secular regimes. This doesn't justify wrongs done in the name of Christianity, but it does undermine unchecked enthusiasm for a godless utopia. ~ Scott Klusendorf

Utopia has a way of hiding in plain sight. ~ David Hopper

Long ago it had been discovered that without some crime or disorder, Utopia soon became unbearably dull. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

Utopia would seem to offer the spectacle of one of those rare phenomena whose concept is indistinguishable from its reality, whose ontology coincides with its representation. ~ Fredric Jameson

Utopia is not one of the options. ~ David Bergland

The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past. ~ Lois Lowry

No utopia can ever give satisfaction to everyone, all the time. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

When I die, I want to die in a Utopia that I have helped to build. ~ Henry Kuttner

The really damaging thing is that the objectives, the goals of the people on the left are not possible. There is no utopia. ~ Rush Limbaugh

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it. ~ Adam Smith