#utopia

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 Aldiss

#mankind #optimism #science-fiction #utopia #men

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears. ↗

— Shelby Foote

#perfection #utopia #boredom

Utopia means elsewhere. ↗

— John Malkovich

#means #utopia

Our aims in political activism are not, and should not be, to create a perfect utopia. ↗

— Paul Wellstone

#aims #create #our #perfect #political

All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side. ↗

— Marguerite Young

#beauty #before #bridge #end #exist

[A] permanent possibility of selfishness arises from the mere fact of having a self, and not from any accidents of education or ill-treatment. And the weakness of all Utopias is this, that they take the greatest difficulty of man and assume it to be overcome, and then give an elaborate account of the overcoming of the smaller ones. They first assume that no man will want more than his share, and then are very ingenious in explaining whether his share will be delivered by motor-car or balloon. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#education

The house a woman creates is a Utopia. She can't help it - can't help trying to interest her nearest and dearest not in happiness itself but in the search for it. ↗

— Marguerite Duras

#creates #dearest #happiness #help #her

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state we can imagine living in is Utopian; and so cynical that the only Utopia we can believe in is authoritarian. ↗

— Lionel Trilling

#authoritarian #believe #cynical #form #heart

My husband is not American. He was born in Brazil, where he grew up under a filthy, corrupt dictatorship. In his twenties, he moved to Europe, where he lived for a while under various socialist democracies. He spent a few years on a kibbutz in Israel, living out a utopian experiment in communal existence. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#born #brazil #communal #corrupt #democracies

Over the years Woodstock got glorified and romanticised and became the event that symbolised Utopia. It's the last page of our collective memory of the age of innocence. Then things turned ugly and would never be the same again. ↗

— Ang Lee

#age #became #collective #event #glorified