Politics

"In shattering the perceived rigidity of the present, utopianism paves the way for change. Perfect worlds may not be realizable or even desirable, but that doesn’t mean we should shy away from imagining and striving for a better future. Societies without extreme inequality and environmental degradation are surely within the bounds of possibility. Whether in the form of a creative novel, a social movement, or a political proposal, dreaming can help us get there."

"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."

"Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now."

"The ground-root folly of this piteous philantropy is thinking to distribute indivisibles, and make equality in things incommensurable: forged under such delusions, all Utopias are castles in the air or counsels of despair."

"I couldn't survive my own pessimism if I didn't have some kind of sunny little dream. … Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That’s my utopia. That's what I want for me."

"Utopia lies at the horizon. When I draw nearer by two steps, she retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps forward, she swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never reach it. For what might utopia be useful? It is useful for this: to keep walking."

"Critics contend that utopianism privileges uniformity over diversity, consensus over dissent, and end-of-history stasis over ongoing change. Is it possible in a utopian society to permit expressions of diversity that might lead to conflict? Can anything essentially new happen after utopia has been achieved. Or do genuinely new ideals inherently threaten utopias? Once built, must they become conservative in some sense?"

"Utopias are invented to be realized, and as long as there is no demand for an improvement of living conditions, changing things is impossible."

"[D]oes legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes."

"This odious doctrine of apartheid at 11-plus. ... We reject it because as a nation we cannot afford artificially to segregate three-quarters of our children, and virtually cut them off from the normal chance of higher education."

"The whole ethos of apartheid is man's inability to live peacefully with people of another race, unless the races are divided into their own homelands. Simonstown not only was a living witness that this could happen, but it had been happening for over one hundred and fifty years. It was a living reproach to the rest of South Africa, a scandal in our midst, a blight which had to be got rid of. The majority of the Coloured people were swept from their homes to a township where they will live alone. This township with the ominous name of Slangkop is situated in the wind raked sand dunes on the isolated slopes nine miles from Simonstown. A sad and gaunt air hangs like the driven sand over the place. The pleas and the wishes of the Coloured population went unheeded. Separate development decreed otherwise."

"We don't want apartheid liberalised. We want it dismantled. You can't improve something that is intrinsically evil."

"Apartheid means: ‘something of your own’; ...separate development means the kind of growth which one creates by means of own power and for the sake of yourself and your people."

"Israel is not consistent in its new anti-apartheid attitude... they took Israel away from the Arabs after the Arabs lived there for a thousand years. In that, I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state."

"If we consider what Merton College and what the Oxford School of English owes to the Antipodes, to the Southern Hemisphere, especially to scholars born in Australia and New Zealand, it may well be felt that it is only just that one of them should now ascend an Oxford chair of English. Indeed, it may be thought that justice has been delayed since 1925. There are of course other lands under the Southern Cross. I was born in one; though I do not claim to be the most learned of those who have come hither from the far end of the Dark Continent. But I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all, I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White."

"... the policy of separate development [i.e. apartheid] can be tested by any unprejudiced person against the requirements of Christianity and morality, and it will be found to meet all those requirements."

"During those years color seemed too sweet a medium to express the anger, disgust and fear that apartheid inspired, ..."

"Apartheid law in South Africa] appears to be a clear and even extreme instance of that discrimination between different individuals which seems to me to be incompatible with the reign of liberty. The essence of what I said [in The Constitution of Liberty] was really the fact that the laws under which government can use coercion are equal for all responsible adult members of that society. Any kind of discrimination — be it on grounds of religion, political opinion, race, or whatever it is — seems to be incompatible with the idea of freedom under the law. Experience has shown that separate never is equal and cannot be equal."

"I grew up with two inheritances — the ability to speak and write and fight in the English language, on the one hand, and a deep suspicion of the English as racial hypocrites whose liberal pretence helped them escape the harsher criticism of apartheid reserved for white Afrikaans speakers, on the other. … But while Afrikaans has, rightly, been the target of political ridicule, English and the English continue to labour under what political studies professor Herman Giliomee famously called “the illusion of innocence”."

"Huh, not much bloody "Unitate" about this place!"

"Our enemies latched unto the word "apartheid" and in a very sly manner transformed it into the strongest weapon in the onslaught against freedom and civilization in our country."

"Because you could not translate the word apartheid into the more universal language of English, the wrong connotation was given to it."

"I don’t have an issue with serving in the military per se, but serving in the South African army suppressing black people just didn’t seem like a really good way to spend time."

"The anti-apartheid movement in the '80s... he (Howard Zinn) was there. ...He put everything there, because he cared very deeply that these things were wrong -- that apartheid was wrong... that was the early '80s, and there were people who didn't really think it was so bad. That's the thing. A lot of times we look back and we remember how radical it was to confront apartheid. Now, everyone looks back and knows it was wrong... That's why dissent is so important, because it creates an atmosphere in which people can explore alternative ways of thinking. That's something I took from Howard. That's what Howard taught. That's why he still matters."

"The people who are opposing the policy of apartheid have not the courage of their convictions. They do not marry non-Europeans."

"I am one of those who believe that there is no permanent home for even a section of the Bantu in the white area of South Africa and the destiny of South Africa depends on this essential point. If the principle of permanent residence for the black man in the area of the white is accepted then it is the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it in this country."

"There is not an Indian community in the world that is better off than the Indians in South Africa. That is the type of apartheid that I stand for. That is the type of apartheid that is not dead."

"South Africa has witnessed the replacement of racial apartheid for what can be accurately described as "class apartheid.""

"America—and that means all of us—opposes apartheid, a malevolent and archaic system totally alien to our ideals."

"American society as a whole seemed committed to the idea of the races living together on an equal basis. This was something few South Africans, white or black, had actually seen. Nconganwe had trouble accepting that it actually existed. In African culture, the family and extended family were everything. Loyalty to one's clan was far more important than any feeling of nationhood. America had forged her own borders. South Africa’s had been drawn by European colonists, with no thought to the peoples already living there. ... South Africans had little experience with the idea of political dialogue. Any difference of opinion in this bloody land was cause for violence... [W]hat nation should the Xhosas or Zulus feel allegiance to? The government was the enemy and the South African nation was a collection of peoples kept deliberately apart. There was no concept of the “melting pot” or a pluralistic society. That much of apartheid had taken root."

"I am sick and tired of the hollow parrot-cry of “Apartheid!” I’ve said many times that the word “Apartheid” means good neighbourliness."

"Apartheid in South Africa is nothing but fascism. It was gaining roots from the early period of white colonization in the seventeenth century, and particularly after the mining industry brought South Africa fully into the capitalist orbit in the nineteenth century."

"Although white businessmen and developers are guilty of some unfair treatment of blacks, they turned South Africa into a modern industrialized nation, which the poor, uneducated blacks couldn't have accomplished in several more decades. If more blacks were suddenly given control of the nation, its economy and business, as Mandela wished, they could have destroyed what they have waited and worked so hard for."

"Unthread the rude eye of rebellion."

"Disobedience, in the eyes of any one who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion."

"The greatest expression of rebellion is joy."

"The worst of rebels never arm To do their king or country harm, But draw their swords to do them good, As doctors cure by letting blood."

"Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him."

"Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: It is right to rebel."

"La evolución verdadera que mejore la vida de los mexicanos, no la de sus parásitos, vendrá con la revolución: ésta y aquella se completan y la primera no pueda coexistir con los anacronisnos y subterfugios que despiertan hoy los redentores del pasivismo. Para evolucionar es preciso ser libre y no podemos tener libertad si no somos rebeldes, porque nunca tirano alguno ha respetado a los pueblos pasivos; jamás un rebaño de carneros se ha impuesto con la majestad de su número inofensivo, al lobo que bonitamente los devora sin cuidarse de otro derecho que el de sus dientes. Hay que armarse, pero no de un voto inútil, que siempre valdrá tanto como el tirano quiere, sino de armas efectivas y menos candorosas cuyo uso nos traiga la evolución ascendente y no la regresiva que preconizan los luchadores pacifistas. ¡Pasividad, nunca! Rebeldía, ahora y siempre."

"Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against."

"The domestic upheavals of the 1960’s and 70’s taught empire some valuable lessons on just how dangerous an informed and discontent population can be. As a result, and through a steady application of misinformation, carrots, and sticks, empire has worked steadily to drain the focus, resolve, and militancy of the informed and discontented. From that point to this, empire has manufactured a discontinuity in popular struggle, while maintaining continuity in its own growth and consolidation. One of the empire’s principal tools and weapons has been its prisons."

"A riot is the language of the unheard."

"The spirit of rebellion is a spirit of desperation-a desperate rejection of whatever exists, a desperate aspiration toward some kind of utopia. ...It is governed by a blind momentum... and its so-called leaders are... its captives, and ultimately its victims. ...The so-called "betrayal" is... the necessary conclusion... [I]ts impossible intentions are unrealizable... the end result is... a regime which pretends to embody these intentions and... enforces such false pretentions by terror. A revolution... is a... practical exercise in political philosophy. ...It requires an attentive prudence, a careful calculation of means and ends, a spirit of sobriety... [A] successful revolution cannot be governed by the spirit of the mob. ...[I]f ...revolution is not to degenerate into a rebellion, mob actions must be marginal... [O]nly a self-disciplined people can... undertake... a revolution. ...[A] successful revolution is best accomplished by a people who do not really want it at all, but find themselves reluctantly making it."

"But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression."

"The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & What country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure."

"Rebellion in this land shall lose his sway, Meeting the check of such another day."

"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. [...] It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."

"To be different is to be held in suspicion. The nonconformist is a subversive. Subversion and rebellion make societies become more generous, more diverse, more compassionate and an individual more free. For the inability or unwillingness to see rebellion as a virtue and not a flaw is what provokes the uncomprehending hostility that makes the anxious herd stifle dissent and stamp out anything different. But humanity is not a herd, and being human demands a vigilance against the kind of provocations that start stampedes."

"Satan and his angels rebelled against God in heaven, and proudly presumed to try their strength with his. And when God, by his almighty power, overcame the strength of Satan, and sent him like lightning from heaven to hell with all his army; Satan still hoped to get the victory by subtlety."