Dystopia Quotes - Page 2

In the future, violence would clearly become a valuable form of social cement.

Togetherness is beating up an empty elevator.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did it, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult. It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics at the time. I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe, the entire government gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

Margaret Atwood

Before Sept. 11, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.

Jeffrey Rosen

Even though we don't know which companies the NSA has compromised – or by what means – knowing that they could have compromised any of them is enough to make us mistrustful of all of them. This is going to make it hard for large companies like Google and Microsoft to get back the trust they lost. Even if they succeed in limiting government surveillance. Even if they succeed in improving their own internal security. The best they'll be able to say is: "We have secured ourselves from the NSA, except for the parts that we either don't know about or can't talk about.

Bruce Schneier

Mai whispers, “Why did she have to leave? When she was there, I knew where I had her; she was safe.”“You of all people,” Nicholas says, “should know that freedom is more important than being safe.

E.J. Squires

The central planners of Democratic Socialism tighten their noose when people resist their plans and assert their rights. All Socialism is intended to devolve into Communism, and as a result, Totalitarianism.

A.E. Samaan

All utopias are dystopias. The term "dystopia" was coined by fools that believed a "utopia" can be functional.

A.E. Samaan

There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'.

Philip K Dick

Out here we speak Malspeak, a mangle of English and old languages like Spanish, Mandarin, and Russian. Dialects from a time when the land was defined by many borders. Now there’s only one that matters. And I am on the wrong side of it.

Georgia Clark

The zoo grounds reeked of desolation, but the silence had an undercurrent, a silvery vibe, like the hush of a concert hall just before the first note.

Suki Michelle

Oh that voice, so sweet. Rich, like the taste of vanilla ice cream, vowels like flute music, warm caramel consonants. She could float in that voice forever and not miss a thing.

Suki Michelle

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?

George Orwell

The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible. In fact, we may already be there.While many writers have considered what the internet means for global civilization, they are wrong. They are wrong because they do not have the sense of perspective that direct experience brings. They are wrong because they have never met the enemy.

Julian Assange

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

Margaret Atwood

…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.

Leot Felton

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

Erica Lindquist

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.

Erica Lindquist

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.

Jeyn Roberts

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

Iain Banks

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.

Louise Lawrence

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.

Veronica Roth

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

Alexia Purdy

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.

Ray Bradbury

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.

Mark Cantrell

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 balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.

H.G.Wells

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

Christine Amsden

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

Christine Amsden

Elijah blinked in dazzling sunlight and took a deep breath. The sweet-pepper scent of meadow grass told him immediately where he was. Winded, he skidded to a halt as the portal spat him out. Above him stretched skies of cornflower blue, dotted with threadbare white clouds sailing over like cotton galleons on the summer breeze.

Sharon Sant

Zombies are not just fictional creatures that devour the flesh of the living. They also include those who follow the words of others without thinking for themselves. This world is falling apart. I don’t think anyone can disagree with that. People live in their twenty-mile-radius realities and don’t notice the world happening around them, until it finally breaks down their front door.

Joseph McGinnis

The better you tell an old story, the more you are talking about right now.

John Crowley

I could be listening to Painted Red weave the stories of the saints in her rich roomy voice, and beginning to see how all those stories were in some way one story: a simple story about being alive, and being a man; a story that, simple as it was, couldn't itself be told.

John Crowley

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?

Georgia Clark

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.

Georgia Clark

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

Georgia Clark

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

Georgia Clark

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.

Georgia Clark

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.

Ally Condie

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.

James Dashner

The burned corpses of the doppelgängers of Hitler and Braun, numerous false leads, meticulously orchestrated evidence, misdirection, and other diversions now being set in place will confuse the Americans and Russians, Zeller knew, and, in the end, put them at each other’s throats.

Paul Majkut

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

Usman W. Chohan

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.

Paul Majkut

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."t"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."t"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 hasn't met since twelve twenty-one." Ricketts said, using a common shorthand for the destruction of Washington a few days before Christmas some years back. "We're still fighting skirmishes with Mexico. The Everglades are drowning. Trade is becoming next to impossible, from everything I can tell, and business here is drying up. It all seems like a bad dream. The future sure isn't what it used to be, is it?"t"We believe in the future, sir. Only it's not like the world we've left behind," Joseph said.t"How's that?"t"We're building our own New Jerusalem up the river. it's a world made by hand, now, one stone at a time, one board at a time, one hope at a time, one soul at a time. . .

James Howard Kunstler

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.

David Mitchell

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

Rick Yancey

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.

Siobhan Davis

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

Tamara Rose Blodgett

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. I see the ship locked between white defiles - they are ice-rocks. I see the dead strew the decks - stark and livid, green mold on their limbs. All are dead, but one man - it is you! But years, though so slowly they come, have then scathed you. There is the coming of age on your brow, and the will is relaxed in the cells of the brain. Still that will, though enfeebled, exceeds all that man knew before you, through the will you live on, gnawed with famine; and nature no longer obeys you in that death-spreading region; the sky is a sky of iron, and the air has iron clamps, and the ice-rocks wedge in the ship. Hark how it cracks and groans. Ice will imbed it as amber imbeds a straw. And a man has gone forth, living yet, from the ship and its dead; and he has clambered up the spikes of an iceberg, and the two moons gaze down on his form. That man is yourself; and terror is on you - terror; and terror has swallowed your will. And I see swarming up the steep ice-rock, grey grisly things. The bears of the north have scented their quarry - they come near you and nearer, shambling and rolling their bulk, and in that day every moment shall seem to you longer than the centuries through which you have passed. And heed this - after life, moments continued make the bliss or the hell of eternity.''Hush,' said the whisper; 'but the day, you assure me, is far off - very far! I go back to the almond and rose of Damascus! - sleep!' ("The House And The Brain

Edward Bulwer-Lytton

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.

Stephen Black

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

Yoshiyuki Sadamoto

There was something called Christianity.

Aldous Huxley

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

Takashi Kajii

...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.

Chuck Klosterman

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

Tad Williams

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.

Heather Anastasiu

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

A.J. Darkholme

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

David Marusek

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!

Mark Cantrell

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 real enemies when their family, schools and work teach them to struggle with each other and to believe law and decency come from the teachers?""My son won't be taught that," said Lanark firmly."You have a son?""Not yet.

Alasdair Gray

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 would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

George Orwell

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Dystopia Quotes - Page 2

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