Quotes & Sayings About A Dystopian Society

I wrote Unwind for lots of reasons, and it poses questions about a
lot of subjects. To state it briefly, I wanted to point out how when people
take intractable positions on an issue, and stick to extreme sides,
sometimes the result is a compromise that is worse than either extreme. I
meant it as a wake up call to society
and to point out that sometimes the
problem IS that we take sides on an issue, when a different sort of approach
is needed. It's also to pose questions about what it means to be alive.
Where does life begin, where does it end
and point out that there is no
single answer to these questions. The problem is people who think there are
simple answers. People who see things as simple black-and-white
right-and-wrong are the type of people who will end up with a world like the
world in Unwind. — Neal Shusterman

Unless technology itself is drastically repressed, the idea of the dystopian monoculture like Orwell's 1984 gets harder to believe. But the danger of a solipsistic society will grow, of a disconnected society of mirror-watchers and navel-gazers. — Tad Williams

You can't transform a society for the better with violence, Ashala. Only with ideas. — Ambelin Kwaymullina

I can't - won't do that to him," Summer says sharply. "Or to myself. Besides, your feelings for me aren't real. The Society did this to you. And if they did it to you, they probably scrambled my brain too. I can't trust that any of this is real. — Laura Kreitzer

Most dystopian, classic and contemporary, paints a future world that puts a twist on present society - a future world that could plausibly happen. — Lauren DeStefano

He smiles at her before ever opening his eyes. The innocence in his face ensnares. Wraps her heart in a cocoon.
They did this to him. The Society. Constructed that smile with malicious expectations. Now she must rip it off his face. Because she doesn't deserve his love. Or Gage's. This madness coils around her throat, darkening every inch of her soul. — Laura Kreitzer

I thought it was just him," she says, ignoring him. "But then I found out I had the same effect, which means the Society did something to my head too."
Gage's eyes close, horror washing over him. "You really do love him."
"Yes. No. I don't know." Her cries start up again, piercing his heart. "Gage, help me."
"I love you," he says, holding her closer. "That's real. — Laura Kreitzer

Home, home - a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease and smells. — Aldous Huxley

She reaches into the unknown and claims his hand, clasping it as if he might evaporate into the night. She's petrified. Not of the monstrosities prowling the island, but of the demon inside herself. The one about to rip apart her heart and mind to attain a selfish freedom. And it might all be a lie, placed there by the Society. — Laura Kreitzer

If we keep punishing people for what their parents or their ancestors have done, the world as a whole can never move forward. Society will never grow. — Jennifer Wilson

I fell silent after that. I didn't want to talk about such things anymore, at least today. My chest already hurt and I was trying to keep my mind calm. I didn't want to think of a future so bleak and dark. I had plans for my future and they didn't involve the world ending or society collapsing. — J.M. Northup

My chest tightens to the point I fear my heart will suffocate from the pressure of it. Society's standards are the total opposite from how I was raised. The boy who I thought to be so strikingly handsome has less than a year of his life to live, my new friend only a few more months beyond that. Yet they are living these uneventful lives in which they don't think there is a reason for anything. Will I ever see my mother again, or is this how I will be forced to live the rest of my life, as well? — Jen Naumann

But there's something fundamentally wrong in a system where a girl like Meredith would even consider staying with a boy like Dylan if she has the chance to be free of him. — Amy Engel

At the core of 'Star Trek' is Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. So much of science-fiction is about a dystopian society with human civilization having crumbled. He had an affirmative, shining, positive view of the future. — George Takei

For its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, a projection of ongoing political failures perhaps, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster. — Sarah Hall

I am chaos in this ordered society, the flaw in a carefully wrought plan. I am turbulence in the queen's eternal river. — Eugie Foster

Maybe the Society was right all along. From the very beginning, that's what they called her. A time bomb.
Tick, tick, tick. — Laura Kreitzer

Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity. — Jeffrey Rosen