I believe that all my work explores the human desire or obsession for utopias, and the structure of all my works is the search for utopias lost and rediscovered.
quote by Marguerite Young
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Related quotes
There were a lot of utopias in the nineteenth century, wonderful societies that we might possibly construct. Those went pretty much out of fashion after World War I. And almost immediately one of the utopias that people were trying to construct, namely the Soviet Union, threw out a writer called Zamyatin who wrote a seminal book called We, which contains the seeds of Orwell and Huxley. Writers started doing dystopias after we saw the effects of trying to build utopias that required, unfortunately, the elimination of a lot of people before you could get to the perfect point, which never arrived. … I don’t believe in a perfect world. I don’t believe it’s achievable, and I believe the people who try to achieve it usually end up turning it into something like Cambodia or something very similar because purity tests set in. Are you ideologically pure enough to be allowed to live? Well, it turns out that very few people are, so you end up with a big powerful struggle and a mass killing scene.
quote by Margaret Atwood
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Why have we had to invent Eden, to live submerged in the nostalgia of a lost paradise, to make up utopias, propose a future for ourselves?
quote by Julio Cortazar
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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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.
quote by Robert Nozick
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Misalliance: civilization and progress.
aphorism by Mikhail Kuzmin from A house heated by utopias, translated by Dan Costinaş
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Good start for a coin collection: Thirty pieces of silver.
aphorism by Mikhail Kuzmin from A house heated by utopias, translated by Dan Costinaş
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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My Deja Vu
My dj vu...you're my obsession
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
We'll get the magic back again
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
I wanna see you dancing naked
I wanna see you touch the moon
But when I try to reach your fingers
You just vanish into air
I wanna feel you with my senses
'Cause I'm almost sure the texture of your skin
Is gonna tell me who you are
My dj vu you're my obsession
My dj vu it's always you
My Dj Vu...
I wanna hold you like I used to
I wanna feel you in my blood
I wonder why I do confess this
To myself all the time
I know the time is working against us
But I'll long for you the rest of my whole life
Like a prisoner of hope
My dj vu you're my obsession
My dj vu it's always you
I have tried to get to know you
To get you off my mind
It feels like going back in time
And snap, I see your finger once again
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
My dj vu you're my obsession
My dj vu it's always you
My dj vu you're my obsession
song performed by by Ace Of Base
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My D & Eacute;J & Agrave;Vu
My dj vu...youre my obsession
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
Well get the magic back again
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
I wanna see you dancing naked
I wanna see you touch the moon
But when I try to reach your fingers
You just vanish into air
I wanna feel you with my senses
cause Im almost sure the texture
Of your skin
Is gonna tell me who you are
My dj vu youre my obsession
My dj vu its always you
My dj vu...
I wanna hold you like I used to
I wanna feel you in my blood
I wonder why I do confess this
To myself all the time
I know the time is working against us
But Ill long for you the rest of my whole life
Like a prisoner of hope
My dj vu youre my obsession
My dj vu its always you
I have tried to get to know you
To get you off my mind
It feels like going back in time
And snap, I see your figure once again
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
My dj vu youre my obsession
My dj vu its always you
My dj vu youre my obsession...
song performed by by Ace Of Base
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My Dj Vu
My dj vu...youre my obsession
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
Well get the magic back again
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
I wanna see you dancing naked
I wanna see you touch the moon
But when I try to reach your fingers
You just vanish into air
I wanna feel you with my senses
cause Im almost sure the texture of your skin
Is gonna tell me who you are
My dj vu youre my obsession
My dj vu its always you
My dj vu...
I wanna hold you like I used to
I wanna feel you in my blood
I wonder why I do confess this
To myself all the time
I know the time is working against us
But Ill long for you the rest of my whole life
Like a prisoner of hope
My dj vu youre my obsession
My dj vu its always you
I have tried to get to know you
To get you off my mind
It feels like going back in time
And snap, I see your finger once again
My dj vu everything is up to you
If you do want me you know where to search
My dj vu youre my obsession
My dj vu its always you
My dj vu youre my obsession
song performed by by Ace Of Base
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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You will not arrest the reactionary momentum by ignoring it or dismissing it entirely as a function of bigotry or stupidity. You’ll only defuse it by appreciating its insights and co-opting its appeal. Reaction can be clarifying if it helps us better understand the huge challenges we now face. But reaction by itself cannot help us manage the world we live in today — which is the only place that matters. You start with where you are, not where you were or where you want to be. There are no utopias in the future or Gardens of Eden in our past. There is just now — in all its incoherent, groaning, volatile messiness. Our job, like everyone before us, is to keep our nerve and make the best of it.
quote by Andrew Sullivan
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Lovingly Do The Work
Work is
Life...
Life is work...
Any work is not
Wrong...
Without work is
Worng...
Human every budy works
Wny way too work...s
Work is making you...
Work is given good life
For you...and your's...
So...
Understand too work
Earn money too work...
Live life with your work...
Love too work...
Learn to do the work...
Lovingely do the work...
poem by Otteri Selvakumar
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The structure of life I have described in buildings - the structure which I believe to be objective - is deeply and inextricably connected with the human person, and with the innermost nature of human feeling.
quote by Christopher Alexander
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Love and envy…
They've colonized the world all over
But love is still a desert island.
They're like white tropical angel birds
Each pair's feathers twirled together
Sing over unsung everglades…
Perched like twin heavenly stars forever.
As waves crash against the rocks mermaids
Mermen roar and evilly, conjecture!
How do we intoxicate the air of love?
Poison this ether and drown their hearts
Cool the heavenly mingling in-corrupt bloods:
That sings of utopias clouds with harps.
poem by Mark Heathcote
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An Argument
I. THE VOICE OF THE MAN IMPATIENT WITH VISIONS AND UTOPIAS
We find your soft Utopias as white
As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
How human breasts adore alarum bells.
You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
I'd rather brood in bloody Elsinore
Or be Lear's fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
Promise us all our share in Agincourt
Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
That future ant-hills will not be too good
For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
Promise that through to-morrow's spirit-war
Man's deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate
Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday.
Never a shallow jester any more!
Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain.
Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise
And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain.
II. THE RHYMER'S REPLY. INCENSE AND SPLENDOR
Incense and Splendor haunt me as I go.
Though my good works have been, alas, too few,
Though I do naught, High Heaven comes down to me,
And future ages pass in tall review.
I see the years to come as armies vast,
Stalking tremendous through the fields of time.
MAN is unborn. To-morrow he is born,
Flame-like to hover o'er the moil and grime,
Striving, aspiring till the shame is gone,
Sowing a million flowers, where now we mourn—
Laying new, precious pavements with a song,
Founding new shrines, the good streets to adorn.
I have seen lovers by those new-built walls
Clothed like the dawn in orange, gold and red.
Eyes flashing forth the glory-light of love
Under the wreaths that crowned each royal head.
Life was made greater by their sweetheart prayers.
Passion was turned to civic strength that day—
Piling the marbles, making fairer domes
With zeal that else had burned bright youth away.
I have seen priestesses of life go by
Gliding in samite through the incense-sea—
Innocent children marching with them there,
Singing in flowered robes, "THE EARTH IS FREE":
While on the fair, deep-carved unfinished towers
Sentinels watched in armor, night and day—
Guarding the brazier-fires of hope and dream—
Wild was their peace, and dawn-bright their array!
poem by Vachel Lindsay
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Picture Of Perfect Youth
Left out in the sun to dry again, washed up on a shore line south of spain
Gazing up with telescopic eyes, planetary life above the skies
Oh my god, shes my obsession, my obsession (my obsession)
Here she comes, shes a picture of perfect youth
Here she comes, lifting me up to the moon
Drifting on a boat in emerald seas, pulling on the strings inside of me
Tasting salt as waves dive over me, twisting on a rope of memories
Oh my god, shes my obsession, my obsession
Here she comes, shes a picture of perfect youth
Here she comes, lifting me up to the moon
Here she comes, shes a picture of perfect youth
Here she comes
If you could only see, that Im sinking like a stone
The sea is getting colder, every second as I go
Its like breathing underwater, but I just cant let you go
My obsession, shes my obsession, my obsession
Oh my god, shes my obsession, my obsession (my obsession)
Here she comes, shes a picture of perfect youth
Here she comes, lifting me up to the moonoh my god, shes my obsession, my obsession (my obsession)
Here she comes, shes a picture of perfect youth
Here she comes, lifting me up to the moon
Here she comes
song performed by by Feeder
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Voice Of The Man Impatient With Visions And Utopias
We find your soft Utopias as white
As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
How human breasts adore alarum bells.
You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
I’d rather brood in bloody Elsinore
Or be Lear’s fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
Promise us all our share in Agincourt
Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
That future ant-hills will not be too good
For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
Promise that through to-morrow’s spirit-war
Man’s deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate
Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday.
Never a shallow jester any more!
Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain.
Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise
And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain.
poem by Vachel Lindsay
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Obsession Is A Blessing
Obsession is an irrational desire,
Often occurring across the genders,
Objectionable sometimes with danger,
Affecting mostly the low esteem ones.
The unfulfilled desires cause obsession;
The misplaced affection is the result.
The change of venues and diversions
Of attentions may mitigate the effects.
To turn a writer is a good option.
Obsession will drain in catharses.
Obsession can make outstanding writers.
To have fantasy of it is a safe rout.
The forbidden or the formidable
You are obsessed with, can be brought to you
Literally by imagination
And can be enjoyed by mind and physic.
To be obsessed with the one not your sex
Is the most pleasurable experience
Which one can have even in one way path
Without prejudice to reputation.
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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We human beings are what we have been for millions of years — colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear and gentleness; we are both violence and peace. There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, and the structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals. The outward social structure is the result of the inward psychological structure of our human relationships, for the individual is the result of the total experience, knowledge and conduct of man. Each one of us is the storehouse of all the past. The individual is the human who is all mankind. The whole history of man is written in ourselves.
quote by Krishnamurti
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
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It's not just the war itself. It's what you do after the war and what structure you put in place and how you make that structure work.
quote by John Hewson
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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For whereas the mind works in possibilities, the intuitions work in actualities, and what you intuitively desire, that is possible to you. Whereas what you mentally or "consciously" desire is nine times out of ten impossible; hitch your wagon to star, or you will just stay where you are.
quote by D.H. Lawrence
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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A Poem For the End of the Century
When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,
I, for unknown reasons,
Surrounded by the books
Of prophets and theologians,
Of philosophers, poets,
Searched for an answer,
Scowling, grimacing,
Waking up at night, muttering at dawn.
What oppressed me so much
Was a bit shameful.
Talking of it aloud
Would show neither tact nor prudence.
It might even seem an outrage
Against the health of mankind.
Alas, my memory
Does not want to leave me
And in it, live beings
Each with its own pain,
Each with its own dying,
Its own trepidation.
Why then innocence
On paradisal beaches,
An impeccable sky
Over the church of hygiene?
Is it because that
Was long ago?
To a saintly man
--So goes an Arab tale--
God said somewhat maliciously:
"Had I revealed to people
How great a sinner you are,
They could not praise you."
"And I," answered the pious one,
"Had I unveiled to them
How merciful you are,
They would not care for you."
To whom should I turn
With that affair so dark
Of pain and also guilt
In the structure of the world,
If either here below
Or over there on high
No power can abolish
The cause and the effect?
Don't think, don't remember
The death on the cross,
Though everyday He dies,
The only one, all-loving,
Who without any need
Consented and allowed
To exist all that is,
Including nails of torture.
Totally enigmatic.
Impossibly intricate.
Better to stop speech here.
This language is not for people.
Blessed be jubilation.
Vintages and harvests.
Even if not everyone
Is granted serenity.
poem by Czeslaw Milosz
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