Utopian Quotes - Page 4

• Jews do not have to be Christians. Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, but too utopian, too hopeful, too unrealistic a turn.

  Michael Novak

  Christian, Hopeful, Judaism

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Order, Vision, Transition

  6 Copy quote

• Passion for equality blinds the utopian to the fact that society, as a whole, is based on inequality of men in two respects: the inventor, the innovator, the exceptional man creates something new and insures continuous progress; the others emulate his work or merely improve their own lot by benefiting from his creativity.

  Thomas Steven Molnar

  Passion, Creativity, Men

  4 Copy quote

• The human species was too fond of lying, cheating, envy, ignorance, self-pity, self-righteousness, and utopian visions that always led to mass murder-but until and if it destroyed itself, it harbored the potential to become nobler, to take responsibility for its actions, to live and let live, and to earn the stewardship of the earth.

  Dean Koontz

  Cheating, Lying, Ignorance

  7 Copy quote

• What interests me is to paint the kind of antisensitivity that impregnates modern civilization. I think art since Cezanne has become extremely romantic and unrealistic, feeding on art. It is Utopian. It has less and less to do with the world. It looks inward - neo-Zen and all that. Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself.

  Roy Lichtenstein

  Art, Thinking, Civilization

  37 Copy quote

• I know it's way too Utopian to think we will all ever just hugand love each other- but proactively dealing with hate could be as important to the future as clean water.

  Bobby Sager

  Hate, Thinking, Water

  4 Copy quote

• The planet Mars -- crimson and bright, filling our telescopes with vague intimations of almost-familiar landforms -- has long formed a celestial tabula rasa on which we have inscribed our planeto-logical theories, utopian fantasies, and fears of alien invasion or ecological ruin.

  David Grinspoon

  Long, Mars, Invasion

  5 Copy quote

• All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody believed in Machiavelli's Prince, a Utopian image of the ideally self-interested despot.

  Mary McCarthy

  Believe, Self, Ideas

  Mary McCarthy (2016). “The Stones of Florence”, p.18, Pickle Partners Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think of an intellectual as just being bookish, being interested in history books, utopian ideas, that kind of thing.

  Richard Rorty

  Book, Thinking, Ideas

  7 Copy quote

• Political thought in France is either nostalgic or Utopian.

  Raymond Aron

  Political, France, Nostalgic

  Raymond Aron (2011). “The Opium of the Intellectuals”, p.31, Transaction Publishers

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Money has always been a particular problem for revolutionaries and anti-capitalists. What will money look like 'after the revolution'? How will it function? Will it exist at all? It's hard to answer the question if you don't know what money actually is. Proposing to eliminate it entirely seems utopian and naive.

  David Graeber

  Looks, Answers, Revolution

  "Note worthy: what is the meaning of money?" by David Graeber, www.theguardian.com. December 16, 2011.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Around 1967 I began backing away from dogmatic Leninism, not so much because I thought it was false, I just decided there was nothing utopian about it.

  Henry Flynt

  Backing Away, Dogmatic, Decided

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Independence, World, Way

  6 Copy quote

• 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, children... Where nobody dies... In my worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being honest.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Writing, Men

  "Signal to Noise". Book by Neil Gaiman, 1992.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• You need a prince to make a town in an intellectual sense. Developers want to make money. If they cared about architecture, they'd become architects. I've had so many projects that never came off because they had no sponsor, and not because they were utopian. I just want to build a town that's normal.

  Leon Krier

  Intellectual, Needs, Want

  11 Copy quote

• If utopian fiction became the new trend, I wouldn't read it.

  Veronica Roth

  Fiction, Trends, Ifs

  "Divergent Author Veronica Roth Imagines Terrible Utopian Fiction" by Sabrina Rojas Weiss, December 2, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Healing, Breathing, Everyday

  20 Copy quote

• We have to have a more realistic foreign policy and not a utopian one where we say, oh, we're going to spread freedom and democracy, and everybody in the Middle East is going to love us. They are not going to love us.

  Rand Paul

  Democracy, Middle East, Realistic

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In contrast to the asexual chasteness of official communist art , Nazi art is both prurient and idealizing. A utopian aesthetics (physical perfection; identity as a biological given) implies an ideal eroticism: sexuality converted into the magnetism of leaders and the joy of followers. The fascist ideal is to transform sexual energy into a "spiritual" force, for the benefit of the community.

  Susan Sontag

  Spiritual, Art, Perfection

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Heart, Ideas, Effort

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only utopian liberals could be surprised that the Nazis were art connoisseurs.

  Camille Paglia

  Art, Nazi, Connoisseur

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae”, p.45, Yale University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I try to look at the evolution of these utopian claims. In the late '60s there was an assumption that the wealth generated by industry would be taxed and then put into social programs and it would provide a baseline of stability that would allow people to have the time for self-expression; and that social contract has eroded over the last four decades and now it's every person for themselves.

  Astra Taylor

  Expression, Self, People

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Look back on the utopian dreams of the previous century, or even the century before that, where people thought machines would ultimately give us a quality of life where our needs would be taken care of so we could all basically be artists together in the evening, after we had fished, hunted, raised cattle - or whatever it was Marx imagined for us.

  Astra Taylor

  Dream, Taken, Artist

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back to the 19th century. I was shocked to find what I would describe as far more utopian ideas in the 19th century than in the 20th century. Not only were the ideas so extreme, but surprising people were adopting them.

  Christine Jennings

  Ideas, People, Community

  Source: therumpus.net

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Ideas, People, Community

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source