quotations about Utopia
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
Theirs was a civilization in which the initial difficulties had long since been overcome. The untroubled peace, the unmeasured plenty, the steady health, the large good will and smooth management which ordered everything, left nothing to overcome. It was like a pleasant family in an old established perfectly-run country place.
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
Herland
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
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
The world has become too dangerous for anything less than utopias.
JOHN R. PIATT
New York Times, September 2, 1969
We want our Utopia now.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Main Street
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?
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
Utopian thinking does not provide tangible solutions to society's wicked problems. Nor is it intended to. Instead, it widens the scope of what might be possible in the future; of what we should aspire to.
PAUL BARCLAY
"Where have all the utopian thinkers gone?", ABC News, April 23, 2017
Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision?
ROBERT NOZICK
Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality.
ALBERT CAMUS
Between Hell and Reason
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
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
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
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
I will now confess my own utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium. The fatalistic view of the war function is to me nonsense, for I know that war-making is due to definite motives and subject to prudential checks and reasonable criticisms, just like any other form of enterprise. And when whole nations are the armies, and the science of destruction vies in intellectual refinement with the science of production, I see that war becomes absurd and impossible from its own monstrosity. Extravagant ambitions will have to be replaced by reasonable claims, and nations must make common cause against them.... I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples.
WILLIAM JAMES
"The Moral Equivalent of War"
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