#dystopia

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be? ↗

— George Orwell

#political #equality

The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization. These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there. While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy. ↗

— Julian Assange

#dystopia #fascism #government #internet #privacy

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

— Lois Lowry

#future #life #sci-fi #the-giver #utopia

They were like her rocks. Imperfect and surprising and maybe better in the long run than certainties. Chances, she thought, were life ↗

— Veronica Rossi

#dystopian-fiction #paranormal #life

Perfect crime,' he said softly. 'Yes?' 'Persuade an innocent, idealistic young girl that the future of the human race depends on her sacrificing her own life. She will come into hospital as trustingly as a lamb to the slaughter. She will welcome the implantation of a baby that will kill her. She'll lie there while her brain is destroyed for nine whole months, and no police will arrest you, no court will judge you, you'll get away scot free. At the end of nine months she'll be taken off life support and she'll be completely dead. And no one will be blamed. ↗

— Jane Rogers

#perfect-crime #sacrifice #life

The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others’ ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does. ↗

— Bernard Beckett

#you-ve-been-warned #media

What makes us the strongest tribe on the continent is the fact that a group that opposes these values--a group that would have mankind remain in the new dark ages--is permitted to grow, permitted to exist...and, after it becomes a violent terrorist organization, is allowed to live on it own lands, taken out of the lands of those it has attacked and continues to attack!" He had to stop speaking then--the applause was louder than even his amplified voice. "They expect that fear will drive us to become like them...closed-minded, blind, angry. Our society will remain open and free so long as I am standing upright," he continued, once the applause died down. ↗

— Lia Habel

#steampunk #zombies #age

He watches the sun out of the world and the stars into it and sometimes I wonder if he watches the sun come up again. Is it hard to sleep when you know you are almost at the end? Do you not want to miss a moment, even those that would otherwise seem dull and unremarkable? ↗

— Ally Condie

#dystopian #death

What would I do without you? I'd die of stress and depression before nature killed me. ↗

— James Dashner

#james-dashner #the-kill-order #nature

... Remember that forgiveness too is a power. To beg for it is a power, and to withold or bestow it is a power, perhaps the greatest. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#feminism #forgiveness