Slavok Zizek - Keith Thompson - Buckminster Fuller - Christopher Hitchens - Roger Morneau - Carolyn Heilbrun - Henry Kissinger - William Shakespeare - William Wordsworth - Utopia TV - George Orwell - Penn Jillette - Robert Nozick - Living Utopia: The Anarchists and the Spanish Revolution 1997 - Richard Clay: Utopia: In Search of the Dream TV - The Utopian Spirit TV - Bauhaus 100 TV - Helen Keller - Adam Curtis TV -
At this point we reach the supreme irony of how ideology functions today: it appears precisely as its own opposite, a radical critique of ideological utopias. The predominant ideology today is not a positive vision of some utopian future but a cynical resignation, an acceptance of how ‘the world really is’, accompanied by a warning that, if we want to change it (too much), only totalitarian horror can ensue. Slavoj Zizek, The Relevance of the Communist Manifesto, 2019
Ladies and gentlemen, the New World Order has no intention of creating a better world. They are just baiting the public with empty promises of a New Age utopia. In reality the elite are vicious. They are the ones who caused the wars. They’re the ones who assassinate the real truth seekers. They are the ones with the wealth and the power who attend Bohemian Grove and do the Satanic rituals. It’s time to wake up and know your enemy. Keith Thompson, The New Age Infiltration of the Truth Movement, final cut 2009
Whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch and go relay race right up to the final moment. Buckminster Fuller
The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle. Christopher Hitchens, Love Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays
He [George Orwell] exposed once and for all time the idea of the Stalinist utopia. Christopher Hitchens, lecture Commonwealth Club 1981, ‘Why Orwell Matters’
He told us that they will promise that if their recommendations are followed, that there will be no more wars and no more famines, they will promise a glorious new age of perfect peace and happiness. Roger Morneau, A Trip into the Supernatural
Thinking about profound social change, conservatives always expect disaster, while revolutionaries confidentially expect utopia. Both are wrong. Carolyn Heilbrun
For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon. Henry Kissinger, attributed
For no kind of traffic
Would I admit, no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation, all men idle, all;
And women too – but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty. William Shakespeare, The Tempest II i @154, Gonzalo
All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour. Treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine,
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth
Of its own kind all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people. ibid. II i @165 Gonzalo
None, man, all idle: whores and knaves. ibid. II i @171 Antonio
I would with such perfection govern, sir,
T’excel the Golden Age. ibid. II i 172-173, Gonzalo
Of some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us, – the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all! William Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1850
It’s a graphic novel. It’s called The Utopia Experiments. Utopia s1e1, Channel 4 2013, created and written Dennis Kelly, director Marc Munden, Becky
It’s like opening a door into another world. ibid. Ian
Hello, I’m Jessica Hyde. Come with me now, or you’re all die. ibid. bird at door
The Network … they’re insane. Totally out of control. Utopia s1e2
Did you pricks give me heroin? … The Taliban have been altering it for years to make us infertile. Everyone knows that. ibid. blind bloke
Your lives as you knew them are over. For the next forty-eight hours is about abandoning everything you knew or thought you could rely on and adjusting to the new reality. Utopia s1e3
That’s who Mr Rabbit is – he is the beating heart of all of this. ibid. rozzer woman
Everyone thought I’d gone a bit David Icke … SARS did not exist. Utopia s1e4, professor
CORVAT makes a vaccine that’s only effective on certain races. ibid. bird
I suppose she’s attractive in a skinny bitch evil murderesque kind of a way. ibid.
It’s an experiment. It was a success. Utopia s1e5, Letts
The purpose of Janus is to sterilize the entire human race. ibid.
If they do this, it’s social and economic Armageddon. ibid. pusher
It’s all there. Everything they did. The experiments. The people they murdered. Everything. Utopia s1e6, Jessica
We have a working Russian Flu vaccine and it will be going out tomorrow morning. ibid. news
We're saving a species. Utopia s2e1
We have to kill all of them. ibid. red-headed bird
Do you ever think your life’s become meaningless, Joe? Utopia s2e2, Ian
We’re harvesting the rich, Jeff. ibid. woman
It’s me. Things have gone a bit awry. Yeah just one. Utopia s2e3, bloke in yellow suit
He knows something. If we want to live, we need to find out what he knows. ibid. assassin at breakfast
You’re not into me any more, are you? Right. Can I ask why? Utopia s2e4, Becky to Ian
We’ve been planning this for thirty years. ibid. blonde woman to Ian
We get rid of bodies now? We're killers? Utopia s2e5, Becky to Ian
How much fucking worse? ibid. Becky
Why did you have him then? Nothing uses carbon like a first-world human, yet you created one. Why? Why would you do that? He will produce five hundred and fifty tons of carbon in his lifetime. That’s forty trucks’ worth. Utopia s2e6, bloke to mother at airport
In the past the need for a hierarchical form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave. George Orwell, 1984
If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him? George Orwell, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, The Tribune 12 April 1946
If you want to find utopia, take a sharp right on money and a sharp left on sex and it’s straight ahead. Penn Jillette
There will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own Utopian vision upon others. Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, 1974
‘Anarchism is freedom.’ Living Utopia: The Anarchists and the Spanish Revolution, Miguel Alba, 1997
‘I woke up to the sound of the factory sirens. And it was as if all of Barcelona were beating with a single heart. It was something you experience maybe once in 100 years. And one thing I can say is that it marked my life. That emotion is always with me.’ ibid. Federico Arcos
‘The real revolution started on July 19th. The people started it spontaneously defending themselves against the army. It was the one and only time that the people defeated the army.’ ibid. Francisco Carrasquer
‘The people discovered they were the masters of their own fate.’ ibid. Federico Arcos