utopia quotes

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

- Nathaniel Hawthorne
  The Scarlet Letter, ch.1.

   'The Art of Being Ruled'might be described from some points of view as an infernal Utopia. Rather than custom, it feels more like an invocation to an unknown deity when Cubans get together†they hold a suspenseful silence until any voice is heard saying or singing something that has nothing to do with the purpose of the meeting.

-Jose Lezama Lima
  Rude Assignment, ch.31. 1966  Paradiso, ch.3.

There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.

- Norman Kingsley Mailer
  Cannibals and Christians,'My Hope For  America'.