Utopian World Quotes & Sayings

Loving Your Enemies ... Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this demand is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes it is love that will save our world and civilization; love even for our enemies. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The internet, although beloved by all including Al Qaeda, went straight from barbarism to decadence without ever encountering a civilisation. It was never utopian, although it was free. Its lawyers are patent trolls. Its political parties are flash mobs in the streets. Its wealthy are nouveau-rich cranks. Its poor are a tidal wave of Third World young people. The Twenty-Teens are quite an interesting cultural period. — Bruce Sterling

All in all, I don't think robots and greater automation can bring about a utopian world as I imagined it would as a kid 50 years ago. — Stanley Druckenmiller

On the conservative side, today's libertarianism is far more dogmatic and devoid of qualification than the liberalism of Adam Smith or J.S. Mill. Like Marxism, libertarianism is a utopian worldview based on an economic-determinist vision of history. Unlike Marxism, libertarianism is highly specific in its predictions about the transition to the utopian world order, rendering it vulnerable to fact. — Michael Lind

Our business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and credible, if we can, first this facet and then that, of an imaginary whole and happy world. — H.G.Wells

Now I must leave you as you enter the world that is Fuck. You are fucking lucky to be here. It's almost utopian. — Lewis Black

These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world. — Alain De Botton

'Divergent' was my utopian world. I mean, that wasn't the plan. I never even set out to write dystopian fiction, that's just what I had when I was finished. At the beginning, I was just writing about a place I found interesting and a character with a compelling story, and as I began to build the world, I realized that it was my utopia. — Veronica Roth

In America, Rousseauism has turned Freud's conflict-based psychoanalysis into weepy hand-holding. Contemporary liberalism is untruthful about cosmic realities. Therapy, defining anger and hostility in merely personal terms, seeks to cure what was never a problem before Rousseau. Mediterranean, as well as African-American, culture has a lavish system of language and gesture to channel and express negative emotion. Rousseauists who take the Utopian view of personality are always distressed or depressed over world outbreaks of violence and anarchy. But because, as a Sadean, I believe history is in nature and of it, I tend to be far more cheerful and optimistic than my liberal friends. Despite crime's omnipresence, things work in society, because biology compels it. Order eventually restores itself, by psychic equilibrium. Films like Seven Samurai (1954) and Two Women (1961) accurately show the breakdown of social controls as a regression to animal-like squalor. — Camille Paglia

For her, the rallying cry of the 1968 Paris general strikes - "Under the paving stones, the beach!" - wasn't likely to inspire. Beneath the city streets, she might have retorted, was nothing more than the dirt to which we will all return. Another world isn't possible, certainly not if it's some eden of plenty and ease, reachable only by revolution or the utopian imagination. A better world is here already, in the streets themselves, waiting to be discovered and brought forth by all of us, not just a radical vanguard. Jacobs looked askance at any situation in — Jane Jacobs

There is something very utopian about what I do. But utopia is nothing more than a truth that the world is not yet ready to hear. — Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Also by my earliest days, I was fascinated by a utopian vision of what the world could be like. I've thought that science could be the basis for a better world, and that's what I've been trying to do all these years. — George E. Brown Jr.

All serious art, music, literature is a critical act. It is so, firstly, in the sense of Matthew Arnold's phrase: "a criticism of life." Be it realistic, fantastic, Utopian or satiric, the construct of the artist is a counter-statement to the world. — George Steiner

Between 1946-1956, every turn was a left turn. I had to fend off temptations toward anarchism. I was more deeply drawn into the vision of an egalitarian society shaped by radical social engineering, Marxist historical and sociological interpretation, and resource redistribution. Everything imaginable seemed possible for my young mind, and I was well rewarded for my utopian thoughts by those older leaders of my church. Resistance to all those ideas simply didn't occur either on my part or on the part of people I knew, including family and friends. I was on a mission to make the world a much better place and felt empowered to actually transform our society — Thomas C. Oden

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash. — John Berger

When I wrote 'The Giver,' it contained no so-called 'bad words.' It was set, after all, in a mythical, futuristic, and Utopian society. Not only was there no poverty, divorce, racism, sexism, pollution, or violence in the world of 'The Giver'; there was also careful attention paid to language: to its fluency, precision, and power. — Lois Lowry

The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash. I spent two years traveling the country to write a book on the Christian Right called American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. I visited former manufacturing towns where for many the end of the world is no longer an abstraction. They have lost hope. Fear and instability have plunged the working classes into profound personal and economic despair, and, not surprisingly, into the arms of the demagogues and charlatans of the radical Christian Right who offer a belief in magic, miracles, and the fiction of a utopian Christian nation. And unless we rapidly re-enfranchise our dispossessed workers into the economy, unless we give them hope, our democracy is doomed. — Chris Hedges

I'm not trying to be a solution or create a freer, utopian world. I think my music dreams of it, though. — Jenny Hval

We act, though, not under a utopian illusion that you or I or anyone or everyone together can rid this world of pain and suffering. That responsibility belongs to the resurrected Christ, and he will do it when he returns. But until that day, we do with an undivided heart whatever God calls us to do. — David Platt

The Spanish and Portuguese empires proclaimed that it was not riches they sought in the Indies and America, but converts to the true faith. The sun never set on the British mission to spread the twin gospels of liberalism and free trade. The Soviets felt duty-bound to facilitate the inexorable historical march from capitalism towards the utopian dictatorship of the proletariat. Many Americans nowadays maintain that their government has a moral imperative to bring Third World countries the benefits of democracy and human rights, even if these goods are delivered by cruise missiles and F-16s. — Yuval Noah Harari

We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, and children ... Where nobody dies ... In my worlds people died. And I thought I was being honest. I thought I was being honest. — Neil Gaiman

The notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining what the world would be like if everyone's behavior was utterly consistent with some abstract moral ideal-in this case, economic theories that assume all human action is based on calculating, systematic, (but scrupulously law-abiding), greed. — David Graeber

The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy. — Virginia Postrel

Today our nation is in such shambles that it appears that almost anyone could do a better job of execution than the current leaders. The principal problem appears to be a lack of congruency between the president and the people. His goal seems to be a utopian society managed by the government, rather than the free, self-governing society that the founders left us. Americans want to be free, and the president's approval ratings indicate that "we the People" do not agree with his goals. I pray that the next president will have a set of values that matches those of the majority of Americans. I pray that he will use his power to encourage the "can-do" attitude that characterized America's rapid ascent to the pinnacle of the world. — Ben Carson

Their [realists'] concern is that utopian aspirations towards a new peaceful world order will simply absolutize conflicts and make them more intractable. National interests are in some degree negotiable; rights, in principle, are not. International organizations such as the United Nations have not been conspicuously successful in bringing peace, and it is likely that the states of the world would become extremely nervous of any move to give the UN the overwhelming power needed to do this. — Kenneth Minogue

TO BE HOPEFUL in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. — Howard Zinn

In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave. — George Orwell

There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom. The glib supposition of utilizing atomic energy when our coal has run out is a completely unscientific Utopian dream, a childish bug-a-boo. Nature has introduced a few fool-proof devices into the great majority of elements that constitute the bulk of the world, and they have no energy to give up in the process of disintegration. — Robert Andrews Millikan

Humans are most imaginative when they need a means of self-destruction. If the world existed in an overflowing amount of happiness; a utopian state, then the suicide rate would dwarf any extinction level threat. Humans cannot be trusted with their own survival. Their minds have been trained to be blindly and unconsciously subjugated. In a time related to Heaven-on-Earth, the smallest amount of worry, will drive a human into the arms of death. This is how weak and fragile the human mind and will is. It's funny, because the best friend of humanity, is none other than Chaos itself. — Lionel Suggs

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world
in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind
can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil. — Brian W. Aldiss

To call oneself a libertarian marxist today is not to look backwards but to be committed to the future. The libertarian marxist is not an academic but a militant. He is well aware that it is up to him to change the world - no more, no less. History throws him on the brink. Everywhere the hour of the socialist revolution has sounded. Revolution - like landing on the moon - has entered the realm of the immediate and possible. Precise definition of the forms of a socialist society is no longer a utopian scheme. The only utopians are those who close their eyes to these realities. — Daniel Guerin

Maybe it's because I come from a very utopian world of being a comedian, but I'm used to many live comedy performances going on in any city I'm in, and each of us is trying to be the best at what we do. I don't think of it as a competition so much as a thriving comedy economy. — Trevor Noah

So long as I confine my activities to social service and the blind, they compliment me extravagantly, calling me 'arch priestess of the sightless,' 'wonder woman,' and a 'modern miracle.' But when it comes to a discussion of poverty, and I maintain that it is the result of wrong economics - that the industrial system under which we live is at the root of much of the physical deafness and blindness in the world - that is a different matter! It is laudable to give aid to the handicapped. Superficial charities make smooth the way of the prosperous; but to advocate that all human beings should have leisure and comfort, the decencies and refinements of life, is a Utopian dream, and one who seriously contemplates its realization indeed must be deaf, dumb, and blind. — Helen Keller

For salamanders, regeneration after injury, such as the loss of a limb, involves regrowth of structure and restoration of function with the constant possibility of twinning or other odd topographical productions at the site of former injury. The regrown limb can be monstrous, duplicated, potent. We have all been injured, profoundly. We require regeneration, not rebirth, and the possibilities for our reconstitution include the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender — Donna J. Haraway

WITH THE EMBERS STILL BURNING:
The scientific community has done a pronounced amount of hand-wringing about its involvement in the atomic bomb's creation, and a disproportionately absent amount of the soul-searching with respects to its creation of the science of eugenics. The 450,000 deaths due to the bomb are relatively small in the shadow of the many millions dead as a result of National Socialism's eugenic campaign. The casualties of The Holocaust are the casualties of the science of eugenics, which so many scientists had actively campaigned for leading up to World War II. Yet, the scientific community has confronted its complicity with collective silence and sometimes outright censorship. — A.E. Samaan

True Americanism is practical idealism. Its aims, instead of being materialistic and mechanical, are idealistic to the point of being Utopian. In this way, the U.S. can provide and express ideals that strike a chord in humans everywhere - a declaration of independence on behalf of all the peoples of the world. — Maurice Saatchi

Do not hide behind utopian logic which says that until we have the perfect security environment, nuclear disarmament cannot proceed. This is old-think. This is the mentality of the Cold War era. We must face the realities of the 21st century. The Conference on Disarmament can be a driving force for building a safer world and a better future. — Ban Ki-moon

Institutionalized sharing of resources and sexuality spreads and minimizes risk, assures food won't be wasted in a world without refrigeration, eliminates the effects of male infertility, promotes the genetic health of individuals, and assures a more secure social environment for children and adults alike. Far from utopian romanticism, foragers insist on egalitarianism because it works on the most practical levels. — Christopher Ryan

After seeing the various fantastic sights, a visitor to Panorama Island would have had to gasp in amazement at this unsurpassable view. He would have had the impression that the entire island was a rose floating on the vast ocean and that the giant scarlet flower of an opium dream was conversing on an equal footing with the sun in the sky, just the two of them. What kind of strange beauty had that incomparable simplicity and grandeur created? Some travelers might have recalled the world of myth that their distant ancestors had seen. . . .

How can the author describe the madness and debauchery, the pleasures of revelry and drunkenness, the numberless games of life and death that were played day and night on that magnificent stage? You readers might find something that resembled it, in part, in your most fantastic, bloodiest, and most beautiful nightmares. — Rampo Edogawa

What does interest me is how difficult my culture seems to find it to look the dark side of life directly in the eye. It seems to me that if we look back at mediaeval culture, for example, we see a society which faces the reality of death and pain and limitation, because it has to. Our society, which is progressive and technological and seems to have a slightly fanatical utopian edge to it, gets very uncomfortable when anybody highlights the dark side of humanity, or the world we have built, or what we are doing to the rest of life on Earth. — Paul Kingsnorth

It's why a song such as John Lennon's "Imagine" continues to resonate - it's lovely to daydream about a world no longer plagued by the threat of famine, violence, war, or death. As long as these visions exist as a distant utopian fantasy, a counterbalance to a good zombie yarn, they don't threaten us - but neither do they really inspire us. — Jonathan Martin

There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. ... To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me. — Edward Abbey

She'd listened to a lot of these utopian discussions, and it was somehow comforting that Stephen and his friends could never quite work all the kinks out of their plan; that the world was as obstinately unfixable as her life was. — Jonathan Franzen

They filled our world with weapons aimed at foreheads and smiled as they shot 16 candles right through our future. They killed those strong enough to fight back and locked up the freaks who failed to live up to their utopian expectations. — Tahereh Mafi

I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.
- Martin Luther King Jr. — Martin Luther King Jr.

In my bright, utopian future world, they will hand out college educations like cups of water at the end of the L.A. Marathon. — Henry Rollins

What we are expecting, after 2012, is a one hundred more times, more harmonious, Utopian world, where things like, time travel, levitation, instant telepathy, instant healing, telekinesis are as common and as everyday, as breathing. And I look forward to that time ... I see a very, very positive future coming. — David Wilcock

Political philosophy is realistically utopian when it extends what are ordinarily thought to be the limits of practicable political possibility and, in so doing, reconciles us to our political and social condition. Our hope for the future of our society rests on the belief that the social world allows a reasonably just Society of Peoples. — John Rawls

The Oneida Perfectionists, along with some of the others, believed that feminism, and abolitionism, and other causes that they pursued in their own way without participating with other people outside of their communities, were all piecemeal reforms. That's what makes a utopian a utopian, this idea that they were going to create a whole new world from scratch. — Christine Jennings