#dystopia

(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will? (ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend. IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead. ↗

— Sheri S. Tepper

#dead #dystopia #wome #death

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

Her life has seen little light. She is twelve years old but has a woman’s weathered poise. Her abyss-blue eyes have a piercing focus that some adults find unsettling. [...] She has fired a gun into a human head. She has watched a pile of bodies set alight. She has starved and thirsted, stolen food and given it away, and glimpsed the meaning of life by watching it end over and over. ↗

— Isaac Marion

#dystopia #tragic #food

Gods have become like us, ergo, we have become like gods. And to you, my unknown planetary readers, we will come to you, to make your life as divinely rational and exact as ours. ↗

— Yavgeny Zamyatin -We

#freedom #revolution #freedom

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 point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others ↗

— Iain Banks

#dystopia #greed #indictment #morality #nihilistic

You pays your money and you takes your choice. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#science-fiction #money

...Coca-Cola and fries, the wafer and wine of the Western religion of commerce. ↗

— Tad Williams

#dystopia #future #religion

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes. ↗

— David Mitchell

#dystopia #science-fiction #slavery #science