"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
"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
"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
 |
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 H. Lapham (Notebook)
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
"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
 |
"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
