#utopia

As I’m fond of saying, 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

#politics #sex #utopia #money

This world is better than Utopia because - and follow this point carefully - you can never live in Utopia. Utopia is always somewhere else. That's the very definition of Utopia. ↗

— Brad Warner

#utopia #movies

I grew up in a utopia, I did. California when I was a child was a child's paradise, I was healthy, well fed, well clothed, well housed. I went to school and there were libraries with all the world in them and after school I played in orange groves and in Little League and in the band and down at the beach and every day was an adventure. . . . I grew up in utopia. ↗

— Kim Stanley Robinson

#beach #california #groves #libraries #library

Musical myths speak with authority about our society, its fragility, its strengths, its desires, and its limits. Music becomes a wise version of the utopian messenger, pleasing us with his account of an ideal land but also warning us, in his tones, of all the dangers. ↗

— Edward Rothstein

#utopia #music

The great hatred of capitalism in the hearts of the oppressed, ancient and modern, I think, stems not merely from the ensuing vast inequality in wealth, and the often unfair and arbitrary nature of who profits and who suffers, but from the silent acknowledgement that under a free market economy the many victims of the greed of the few are still better off than those under the utopian socialism of the well-intended. It is a hard thing for the poor to acknowledge benefits from their rich moral inferiors who never so intended it. (p.272) ↗

— Victor Davis Hanson

#economics #income-disparity #inequality #military-history #progressivism

By sanctifying History in order to discredit God, Marxism has merely rendered Him more peculiar and more haunting. You can stifle every impulse in humanity except the need for an Absolute, which will survive the destruction of temples and even the disappearance of religion on earth. The core of the Russian people being religious, they will inevitably gain the upper hand... ↗

— Emil Cioran

#religion

This director could say many things about duty, and self-respect, and dignity, but she knew none of these meant much in the post-modern world. ↗

— B. Barmanbek

#future #science-fiction #utopia #respect

She liked who she was becoming, despite the pain and frustration it brought. ↗

— B. Barmanbek

#future #science-fiction #utopia #science

As one climbs up the ladders in society, one starts feeling more and more like an owner, less like a member of it. ↗

— B. Barmanbek

#future #science-fiction #utopia #science

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