Quotes about dystopia

The main element crucial for the survival of life is also a demon in disguise it will snatch your life away as quickly as you were given it.

path is only a name for a place where you find yourself. Where you're going on it is only a story. Where you've been on it is only another. Some of the stories are pleasant ones some are not. That's dark and light.

Freedom breeds uncertainty uncertainty invites chaos.

That’s the funny thing about guns even untrained hands can feel powerful using them. But take that gun away and you’re left with nothing but a coward whose only skill is how to blindly pull a trigger.

If you listen closely you will hear the spirits sigha lesson lost on humans an enchanting lullaby:Mercy lies in nature’s hands and bound to it we grow.Of the earth we came to be and of the earth we’ll go.

There are those who feel that the world is ultimately moving closer to Truth and to prosperity as the times evolve; then there are those who feel that it is ultimately moving farther away from Truth and into self-destruction. From this, and if it were really that simplistic, one might get the impression that life gravitates slightly into two types of people whom which are diametrically opposed in spirit.

I never thought it would get this bad. I never thought the Reestablishment would take things so far. They're incinerating culture, the beauty of diversity. The new citizens of our world will be reduced to nothing but numbers, easily interchangeable, easily removable, easily destroyed for disobedience.We have lost our humanity.

Twenty years earlier, in a life [Kirsten] mostly couldn’t remember, she had had a small nonspeaking role in a short-lived Toronto production of King Lear. Now she walked in sandals whose soles had been cut from an automobile tire, three knives in her belt.

Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant

Sometimes it's possible, just barely possible, to imagine a version of this world different from the existing one, a world in which there is true justice, heroic honesty, a clear perception possessed by each individual about how to treat all the others. Sometimes I swear I could see it, glittering in the pavement, glowing between the words in a stranger's sentence, a green, impossible vision--the world as it was meant to be, like a mist around the world as it is.

HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute I thought, he's some mother's son just as Hector was, and aren't we women all sisters? If I killed him, I thought, wouldn't It be like killing family?Wouldn't it be making some other mother grieve? So I didn't kill him, but if I had, I might have saved Hector's child. Dead or damned, that's the choice we make. Either you me

Never trust a man who sits, uninvited, at the head of the table in another man's home.

There was no sudden twists or ups and downs, just stories of that person's everyday life. The theme was "growing old". There were no beautiful wo

There was something called Christianity.

The paths people choose in life can lead to the creation or destruction of people, places, things, and relationships. The future is uncertain, but what is certain is there will be change.

They say that when people still rode on vehicles powered by oil, they could go anywhere they wanted.

...Coca-Cola and fries, the wafer and wine of the Western religion of commerce.

...I've spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, an exercise that has been lauded as "the sport of the future" since 1977. Thankfully, that future dystopia has never come.

And that date, too, is far off?''Far off; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand!''How and what is the end? Look east, west, south and north.''In the north, where you never yet trod, towards the point whence your instincts have warned you, there a spectre will seize you. 'Tis Death! I see a ship - it is haunted - 'tis chased - it sails on. Baffled navies sail after that ship. It enters the regions of ice. It passes a sky red with meteors. Two moons stand on high, over ice-reefs.

We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment, before she slips from our grasp and flees. As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.

In the year 2025, the best men don't run for president, they run for their lives. . . .

Your realm is an insane place. In Volaria, no-one goes hungry, slaves are no use when they starve. Those freeborn too lazy or lacking in intelligence to turn sufficient profit to feed themselves are made slaves so they can generate wealth for those deserving of freedom, and be fed in return. Here, your people are chained by their freedom, free to starve and beg from the rich. It's disgusting.

Hate looks like everybody else until it smiles

The life where nothing was ever unexpected. Or inconvenient. Or unusual. The life without colour, pain or past.

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair, a frizzy upheaval. We will call him Bell Pepper. Bell Pepper sidled up beside The Drippy Man and looked at the grilled cheese in his hand. The Drippy Man, a bit uncomfortable at the heaviness of the gaze, politely apologized and asked Bell Pepper if he would like one. “Why is one of your legs fatt

Everything is more whole in the end when you forgo destruction and instead repair, he reasoned. But some things can’t be repaired. His arm can’t be repaired. He will always be broken because of me.

Then the Skopamish showed up. Their chests heaving, rotting eyes like dull raisins in their skulls. Their eyes found mine like a witching wand seeking water.

Homo sapiens! The name itself was an irony. They had not been wise at all, but incredibly stupid. Lords of the Earth with their great gray brains, their thinking minds had placed them above all other forms of life. Yet it had not been thought that compelled them to act, but emotion. From the dawn of their evolution they had killed, and conquered, and subdued. They had committed atrocities on others of their kind, ravaged the land, polluted and destroyed, left millions to starve in Third World co

As melancholia replaced the jarring of my invention, I sat.Unable to breathe in the smog I had created, unable to stand on my betraying legs, unable to howl at the heavens over my sordid soul.In this inferno, I became paroxysmic, my self-hatred, superparamount, numbness dulling the agony of such a devilish act,An iron curtain fell upon the surrounding world, or at least what I had left of it to be owned by the laconic eclipse.All the angels fled, disowning my prayers, the lurid world backed away

Gods have become like us, ergo, we have become like gods. And to you, my unknown planetary readers, we will come to you, to make your life as divinely rational and exact as ours.

Freedom is taken for granted by the free and longed for by those who never had it. But for those who have lost it, the loss burns like the hottest flame.

Writing a novel is agony.

Eric, you need to look at the whole picture," the PM said. "You look at the jobless as a huge pile of scrap and you're looking for what can be recycled. That's good. That's your job. But what you don't realise is that this pile of scrap itself serves a purpose. I need my zeros, Eric. They put fear in people; fear of crime and terrorism. They are a stark reminder to the stakeholders that what they despise today, they may end up joining tomorrow. It keeps them obedient. Remember that!

Who did the council fight?""It split in two and fought itself.""That's suicide!""No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation.""I refuse to believe men kill each other just to make their enemies rich.""How can men recognize their re

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they woul

If women's pants were suggestive, men's were equally so, and they revealed a great deal more of what was underneath them. . . . And yet no one accused men of being improper or encouraging sin by reminding women of what hung between their legs. She looked at herself in the mirror, irritated suddenly by the double standard. This was how her body was made. The fact that it was well made and encased in a pair of blue jeans didn't mean she was inviting anything.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold.

Inside the room there sat a rocker, which she sat on, and which had rocked her while she sipped the beer, because in spite of herself she had become so giddy to have so quickly relieved her heart that she allowed herself to lean backwards while in the rocker, which had made it possible for the rocker to rock her, although it was not her intention to be so rocked. Also there stood an ironing board with a still hot iron on it that was burning a yellow shift, and there was, among several items that

Nothing exists except through human consciousness

We imagine all these postapocalyptic, class-stratified, new-world-order techno-futures. But actually the real world, the world we live in, this is the dystopia.

Society can serve its citizens only to the extent that it knows them.

You don’t have to keep living in a dystopia simply because you’re strong and noble enough to accept it.

Yesterday, here in the middle of the City, I saw a wolf turn into a Russian ex-gymnast and hand over a business card that read YOUR OWN PERSONAL TRANSHUMAN SECURITY WHORE! STERILIZED INNARDS! ACCEPTS ALL CREDIT CARDS to a large man who had trained attack cancers on his face and possessed seventy-five indentured Komodo Dragons instead of legs. And they had sex. Right in front of me. And six of the Komodo Dragons spat napalm on my new shoes.

Everything was so much sharper without the Link fogging me--sights, sounds, smells. It was exhilarating and shocking and terrifying. I knew my emotions had grown too strong. They were dangerous to the Community. They were dangerous to me.But still, I wanted color. I wanted to soar with happiness even if it meant dealing with the weight of fear and guilt, too. I wanted to live. And that meant that I couldn't give the glitching up. At least not yet. Just a little bit longer.

A fictional Dystopia is better than a fake Utopia.

Games are never over because you think them so! Which is why I like you. Are you doing what you want to do...or are you simply another piece of a darkened puzzle? Your own actions predetermined by powers higher than yourself?

It is in the nature of man to want what he does not have. This modern concern for happiness seems a real testimony of its absence.

If nothing else, it's pleasant to consider the possibility. He likes the thought of ships moving over the water, toward another world just out of sight.

Criminal activity exploded throughout the city – thugs multiplied by the thousands. Without fear of rebuke, there was nothing to stop them. It is the ultimate penalty that comes with tolerating the intolerant.

Once upon a time there was war, and starvation, and death. Once upon a time we would kill our brothers and sisters, fearing for our own lives. Once upon a time the characters turned from us, and we wept. Now we do not war, nor do we fear, nor do we weep. We Redact.

And Mother does not hate her; actually, she fears Damaya. Is there a difference? Maybe.

...she wonders why a part of her is trying to find value in degradation.

(...) ha! what is hope? a butterfly in a boxof demons, and nothing escapes the darkuntainted, a mockery of politics and greedstamped with treason and dipped inmyths and force-fed brainwashinggoing off after a time for the grandmassacre of faith, humanity, and still we search, scorched feetfor life but find only fake plastic treessatirical, ludicrous, and ironic

...they come to us, these restless dead,Shrouds woven from the words of men,With trumpets sounding overhead(The walls of hope have grown so thinAnd all our vaunted innocenceHas withered in this endless frost)That promise little recompenseFor all we risk, for all we've lost...

knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith

The more I write stories for young people, and the more young readers I meet, the more I'm struck by how much kids long to see themselves in stories. To see their identities and perspectives—their avatars—on the page. Not as issues to be addressed or as icons for social commentary, but simply as people who get to do cool things in amazing worlds. Yes, all the “issue” books are great and have a place in literature, but it's a different and wildly joyous gift to find yourself on the pages of an en

...because of the foulness of her mother's emotional river, a current which ran swift, changing its path without warning...

I plant a gentle parting kiss on his lips, our strategy is well and truly screwed at this stage anyway. We barely lasted a day.

…our world did not fall because we did not believe in fairness… our world fell because it could no longer support the enormous weight we had put upon it, in the name of fairness.

I'm just sorry. Sorry that there won't be any more camping trips for kids or rock bands or even new books to read. No more movies or fresh bags of popcorn. It really sucks when you think about it. Of course, there is the possibility that we might be able to win this war, but not for a very long time. Probably longer than you and I will ever exist in this world.""I try not to think about it.""Sometimes it's all I ever think about.

There has to be beauty left in the world, Julia," said Kiyu. "Otherwise we have nothing.

Not many people bothered to look for beauty beyond the greenhouses. They went about life with their heads down, just praying to get through the day, to feed themselves and their family. No one ever did anything to make it better.

Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day, every day, sleeping its life away.

Who would want to be the prey in a world full of hunters?~Disarming(Reign of Blood #2)

Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity.And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

If we keep punishing people for what their parents or their ancestors have done, the world as a whole can never move forward. Society will never grow.

I work my way through the rest of my dates, but I'm only there in body. The boys usually give up after the first hour; it's difficult to have a conversation all by yourself. My ratings plummet, but at least my air-time is minimal now, I'm not offering much in the way of entertainment these days.

The Suitors Ball is fast approaching and it's a nasty reminder that my suitor will be chosen shortly. I feel sorry for the poor unfortunate guy, whichever one of them it happens to be.

I'm already under the covers when he comes in. I watch as he takes off his shirt and jeans, and climbs into bed beside me. On any other occasion, the sight and feel of his near naked body would send my blood pressure into orbit, but I'm so exhausted by the events of today that I'm incapable of feeling anything even close to desire. And he doesn't ask anything of me.

Find our way out, Greenie. Solve the buggin' Maze and find our way out.

All of the things that were shown in early studies to be good for longevity—happy marriages, healthy bodies—are ours to have. We live long,good lives. We die on our eightieth birthdays, surrounded by our families, before dementia sets in. Cancer, heart disease, and most debilitatingillnesses are almost entirely eradicated. This is as close to perfect as any society has ever managed to get.

For one last time, I said my goodbyes to the place I’d known as home for the last decade, and for the first time, I welcomed the unknown.

Sadie gave her head an exaggerated scratch. ‘Don’t come too close if you know what’s good for you, these nits are on steroids.

He saw the rules of life clearly for the first time and they were simple: it was a game where Death was the only winner.

It was a room full of ghosts, arranged in readiness for days that would never happen.

His eyes met mine. Brown eyes. I couldn’t read anything and as he turned away I realised he didn’t intend to tell me anything either.

This is the legacy of a compassionate bunch. Our fate now rests on the whims of men.

A glacial chill rushes through Gage. He whips around just in time to see arms clutch Summer around the middle and drag her into the dark. Panic seizes him, and he takes off after her, regardless of the chaos brewing behind him. Her cry of surprise echoes all around them, drilling into his bones.

So as near as I could tell the end of the world began roughly about the time that Billy Carver’s butt rang about halfway through the War of 1812.

Please, Tommy. Please

I'll go over again and again until I've finally crossed to where he is

Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

The point is, there is no feasible excuse for what are, for what we have made of ourselves. We have chosen to put profits before people, money before morality, dividends before decency, fanaticism before fairness, and our own trivial comforts before the unspeakable agonies of others

Simon hated her for that. Perhaps it was automatic. Her appearance alone made her different from him, and human beings had always feared and hated anyone who was different. Two thousand years of history saw it being repeated over and over, the perpetual struggle of one race, or tribe, or creed, against another... each one thinking they were right, superior, morally justified, or chosen by God. Simon saw himself as normal, Laura as abnormal.

To enslave an individual troubles your consciences, Archivist, but to enslave a clone is no more troubling than owning the latest six-wheeler ford, ethically. Because you cannot discern our differences, you assume we have none. But make no mistake: even same-stem fabricants cultured in the same wombtank are as singular as snowflakes.

Beyond the queues, the vacancy screens listed jobs in a multitude of languages. Invariably, they were low-paid and short-term dead-ends. Nearby, people in headphones sat at a bank of machines: the blind and the illiterate force-fed with ‘opportunities’ by soothing machine voices. On the far wall, in large print, a poster declared: BEGGARS CANNOT BE CHOOSERS.

If you love someone, if someone loved you, if they taught you to write and made it so you could speak, how can you do nothing at all? You might as well take their words out of the dirt and try to snatch them from the wind.Because once you love, it is gone. You love and you cannot call it back.

A twisted, pale figure writhing in agony, chest bare and hideous. Tight, rigid cords of sickly green veins webbed across the boy’s body and limbs, like ropes under his skin. Purplish bruises covered the kid, red hives, bloody scratches. His bloodshot eyes bulged, darting back and forth.

My fingers find his. They are warm, pulsing with genetically altered blue blood, powered by mirror matter.

I focus all my energy into become a faster, stronger, and better version of myself.

We’re a nonviolent collective working to undermine the Trust and free the Badlands. Once the Trust is exposed as lying and corrupt, we believe Edenites will do the right thing. Open the borders. Save the Badlands.” Ling lowers her voice with deliberate control. “Kudzu is going to destroy something called Aevum.

I catch movement from the corner of my eye. A tell slender boy stands near us, just a few feet away. Adrenaline bangs through my system. I shove Abel behind me and whip my knife from where I’d hidden it in my boot. “Who the hell are you?

A mix of revenge, sadness and anger funnels into a decision that’s so simple and neat, it could fit in my pocket. I will help Kudzu destroy Aevum. Just like Magnus destroyed my mother.

New York City is finished," he said. "They can't keep order there, and you can't have business without order. It'll take a hundred years to sort things out and get it all going again." "What do you hear of the U.S. government? I said. "We don't have electricity an hour a month anymore and there's nothing on the air but the preachers anyway." "Well, I hear that this Harvey Albright pretends to be running things out of Minneapolis now. It was Chicago, but that may have gone by the boards. Congress

It helps if you don’t think of them as human. More than one officer has called this job pest control.

You're a kid. I didn't know we taught kids manners anymore.

So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the bala

The antagonists of finance’s future, the diaboli ex machina, may have no face at all.

At the entrance of the Führerbunker, a dandelion pushed through the crack between cobblestones. The cadet did not notice that he stepped on it as they entered the bunker. A dark cloud of smoke rose from a burning ministry. Zeller fantasized that the filth that surrounded him was cleansed. He saw himself, a portly and tailored leader in a white uniform with gold epaulets, buttons, and stripes. He imagined himself in an immaculate, white city in Antarctica.