A Quote by Mario Vargas Llosa

We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.

Mario Vargas Llosa

Quote Topics

End Mistrust Must

Quote Author

Mario Vargas Llosa
Peruvian - Novelist
Born: March 28, 1936

There are two generic and invariable features that characterize utopias. One is the content: the authors of utopias paint what they consider to be ideal societies; translating this into the language of mathematics, we might say that utopias bear a + sign. The other feature, organically growing out of the content, is to be found in the form: a utopia is always static; it is always descriptive and has no, of almost no, plot dynamics.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

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.

Marguerite Young

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.

Rebecca West

The most influential utopian idea of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was socialism, which has failed everywhere. Under the banner of socialism, Stalin's U.S.S.R. and Mao's China gave us not utopias but ghastly anti-utopias.

Steven Weinberg

It is true that I am not one of those who laugh at utopias. The utopia of today can become the reality of tomorrow. Utopias are conceived by optimistic logic which regards constant social and political progress as the ultimate goal of human endeavor; pessimism would plunge a hopeless mankind into a fresh cataclysm.

Charles Albert Gobat

Poles have a mistrust of the West and an even deeper mistrust of the East.

Krzysztof Penderecki

Parenthood means becoming comfortable with the fact that there are things outside your control, things that end and fail, just as most utopias end and by some measure fail. And just because they're a failure doesn't mean there isn't value there.

Lauren Groff

I mistrust these people in music industry who can be everybody. This is where technology dictates to them. I mistrust that, that in somehow the chips capture the soul of a player, that's patent nonsense.

Elvis Costello

...if the fear of falling into error is the source of a mistrust in Science, which in the absence of any such misgivings gets on with the work itself and actually does know, it is difficult to see why, conversely, a mistrust should not be placed in this mistrust, and why we should not be concerned that this fear of erring is itself the very error.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The effect of boredom on a large scale in history is underestimated. It is a main cause of revolutions, and would soon bring to an end all the static Utopias and the farmyard civilization of the Fabians.

William Ralph Inge

We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.

Thurgood Marshall

In Kurosawa's films, the tragedy is that this strong man was crushed by corruption or mistrust at the end.

Claire Denis

Too many Americans mistrust their government. And unnecessary government secrecy feeds this mistrust.

Janet Reno

...You know the mistrust of heights is the mistrust of self, you don't know whether you're going to jump.

Janet Fitch

I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories... We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust... We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.

Thurgood Marshall

One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.