"The
first arresting fact about the Utopians is that they were
practical enough to try putting their ideas to the test
of fact. Owing to the greater opportunities offered by a
New Country, many of these trials were made in the United
States. The familiar names of Brookfarm, New Hope, New Harmony,
New Enterprise, record these efforts, and the personalities
of Hawthorne, Horace Greeley, Ripley, Albert Brisbane, Henry
James Sr., adorn a movement of ideas which continue to live,
though in much modified form, in the modern world. Contrary
to usual belief, the actual settlements did not all come
to an end from incompetence or quarrels or unworkability.
Some even grew rich and became the object of their nonsocialized
neighbors' envy….."
-- Jacques Barzun
When
we all relate to each other as we would like to receive
if our roles are reversed, we move closer to utopia. Every
one of us can bring this closer, starting now. This includes
how we relate to our own family, our neighbors and how we
use our wealth and opportunities to help entire nations
that lack our advantages.
-- Bill Blackman
"I
don't wish to defend everything that has been done in the
name of utopia. But I think that many of the attacks misconceive
its nature and function. As I have tried to suggest, utopia
is not mainly about providing detailed blueprints for social
reconstruction. Its concern with ends is about making us
think about possible worlds. It is about inventing and imagining
worlds for our contemplation and delight. It opens up our
minds to the possibilities of the human condition. It is
this that we most seem to need at the present time. There
are doomsters enough-though they have their part to play,
like the prophets of old, warning and admonishing. There
are also our latter-day millenarians, somewhat jaded in
their outlook on the world, and rather prepared to settle
for a quiet life and the idle ticking-over of the engine
of history. Without wishing to bang the inspiration drum
too loudly, this hardly seems enough."
-- Malcolm Bull
"If
our modern world should be able to recapture this power,
the earth's natural resources and web of life would not
be irrevocably wasted within the Twentieth century…..True
democracy founded in neighborhoods and reaching over the
world become the realized heaven on earth. And living peace,
not just an interlude between wars, would be born and would
last through the ages."
-- John Collier
"Did
universal charity prevail, earth would be a heaven, and
hell a fable.
-- Charles Caleb Colton (1825)
When
the perfect order prevails, the world is like a home shared
by all. Leaders are capable and virtuous. Everyone loves
and respects their own parents and children as well as the
parents and children of others. The old are cared for, adults
have jobs, children are nourished and educated. There is
a means of support for all those who are disabled or find
themselves alone in the world. Everyone has an appropriate
role to play in the family and society. Devotion to public
duty leaves no place for idleness. Scheming for ill gain
is unknown. Sharing displaces selfishness and materialism.
-- Confucius
"Our
ulterior aim is nothing less than Heaven on Earth,-the conversion
of this globe, now exhaling pestilential vapors and possessed
by unnatural climates, into the abode of beauty and health,
and the restitution to humanity of the Divine Image, now
so long lost and forgotten."
-- Charles Dana (Mar 7 1844)
"I don't
wish to defend everything that has been done in the name
of Utopia. But I think many of the attacks misconceive its
nature and function. As I have tried to suggest, utopia
is not mainly about providing detailed blueprints for social
reconstruction. Its concern with ends is about making us
think about possible worlds. It is about inventing and imagining
worlds for our contemplation and delight. It opens up our
minds to the possibilities of the human condition."
-- Hans Magnus Enzenberger
"Without
the Utopians of other times, men would still live in caves,
miserable and naked. It was Utopians who traced the lines
of the first City…..Out of generous dreams come beneficial
realities. Utopia is the principle of all progress, and
the essay into a better future."
-- Anatole France
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*
"The world is now too dangerous for anything less
than utopia.
--
R.
Buckminster Fuller
Think
of it. We are blessed with technology that would be
indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal,
the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody,
and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now
what we could never have known before -- that we now
have the option for all humanity to make it successfully
on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to
be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay
race right up to the final moment. --
R.
Buckminster Fuller
|
 |
 |
Every
daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions,
every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human
race, has been labeled Utopian.
-- Emma
Goldman |
 |
"Anti-utopianism
continues to suffuse our culture. Conventional as well
as scholarly opinion posits that utopia spells concentration
camps and that utopians secretly dream of being prison
guards. Robert Conquest, a leading chronicler of the
Soviet terror, is lauded by Gertrude Himmelfarb for
telling the truth about "totalitarianism and utopianism"
in his latest book Reflections on a ravaged Century.
And the final chapter of The Soviet Tragedy, by Martin
Malia, another leading Soviet historian, is tellingly
entitled 'The Perverse Logic of Utopia," Indeed, we
now think of utopian idealism as little more than prelude
to totalitarian murder. At best, an expression of utopian
convictions will call forth a sneer from historians
and social scientists. In the nineteenth century the
anticipation of a future society of peace and equality
was common; now it is almost extinct. Today few imagine
that society can be fundamentally improved, and those
who do are seen as at best deluded, at worst threatening."
-- Lewis
Lapham |
|
|
*
"Imagine all the people living life in peace.
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
and the world will be as one."
-- John
Lennon
|
Nothing
we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence
living at peace would have.
-- Denise Levertov
"The
disappearance
of utopia brings about a static state of affairs in which
man himself becomes no more than a thing. We would then
be faced with the greatest paradox imaginable….After a long,
torturous, but heroic development, just at the highest stage
of awareness, when history is ceasing to be blind fate,
and is becoming more and more man's own creation, with the
relinquishment of utopia, man would lose his will to shape
history and therewith his ability to understand it."
-- Mannheim
|
|
"TV
is sometimes accused of encouraging fantasies. Its
real problem, though, is that it encourages-enforces,
almost-a brute realism. It is anti-Utopian in the
extreme. We're discouraged from thinking that, except
for a few new products, there might be a better way
of doing things."
-- Bill
McKibben
|
 |
In
Utopia, where every man has a right to everything, they
all know that if care is taken to keep the public stores
full, no private man can want anything; for among them
there is no unequal distribution, so that no man is
poor, none in necessity; and though no man has anything,
yet they are all rich; for what can make a man so rich
as to lead a serene and cheerful life, free from anxieties.
- Thomas
More |
"It
is no longer enough to point out what we don't like, we
have to work out 'What sort of society do we want?"
-- Sheila Rowbotham
"….This
world needs Utopias as it needs fairy stories. It does not
matter so much where we are going, as long as we are making
consciously for some definite goal. And a Utopia, however
strange or fanciful, is the only possible beacon upon the
uncharted seas of the distant future."
-- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
 |
Our
business here is to be Utopian, to make vivid and
credible, if we can, first this facet and then that,
of an imaginary whole and happy world. -- H.G.
Wells
"The
Utopia of a modern dreamer must needs differ in one
fundamental aspect from the Nowheres and Utopias men
planned before Darwin quickened the thought of the
world. Those were all perfect and static States, a
balance of happiness won for ever against the forces
of unrest and disorder that inhere in things. One
beheld a healthy and simple generation enjoying the
fruits of the earth in an atmosphere of virtue and
happiness, to be followed by other virtuous happy,
and entirely similar generations until the Gods grew
weary. Change and development were damned back by
invincible dams for ever. But the Modern Utopia must
be not static but kinetic, must shape not as a permanent
state but as a hopeful sage leading to a long ascent
of stages." -- H.G.
Wells
|
"Widely
spaced earth-sheltered towns offer sweeping views over the
plains. High-speed trains link the communities. Food is
grown in the region. Bikeways are everywhere. Nonpolluting
hydrogen powers all vehicles. Sunlight and wind generate
the hydrogen. Note the earth-covered bridges, the continuous
window bands, the wind machines across the farmlands. In
this new America, everything is reused, recycled, conserved."
-- Malcolm Wells
