On this island, created in his book by Tomas Moro, inhabits a population that has organized an ideal society that is far from the evils and injustices present in any society belonging to the real plane.

With this Moro inaugurates the concept of political utopia, so from that moment, the word utopia begins to refer to the ideal worlds where there is an ideal policy and social behavior, which would lead the human to maximum happiness. It also emerges as a synonym for that unrealizable, that which we cannot achieve.

Within this article we will then explain some phrases of the most important intellectuals and artists of recent times, so that we can have an overview of what these characters of human thought think about the ideal state called utopia. Here are the phrases:

Anatole France

“Utopia is the beginning of all progress and the design of a better future.” (Anatole France)

For example, for the celebrated French novelist and Nobel laureate, utopia is the driving force behind humanity toward progress. That is, in utopia lies the first push that makes people direct their efforts to improve their future, thereby managing to focus as a society on improving the future.

In this case utopia has been the seed that will generate the change. It is as if Anatole France would like to say that it is necessary to wish the ideal first and then walk to that point that we think is ideal to achieve happiness, and in that way we are building a better world, which will translate into a better future.

Carlo Drossi

“The utopia of a century, often became the vulgar idea of the next century.”

Likewise, Carlos Dossi, an Italian writer and diplomat points to a fact that seems to be repeated in history, and is that often during an era an ideal of government, or of society, or of a specific fact for humanity, is either correcting or implementing a practice, and then over the next few years that idea can be positioned in collective thinking, which makes the men and women of future generations to achieve it.

However, as with the times people change and ideas will not necessarily be well seen by those the citizens of the future as something with courage or necessary, even sometimes the utopia of a hundred years ago, in the light of this thought of Carlo Dossi, can even be unusual or in bad taste.

Gonter Grass

“Melancholy and utopia are head and tail of the same coin.” (Gonter Grass)

In another sense, a little more artistic or spiritual, this German artist refers to melancholy, that feeling that would be called that in the nineteenth century, but that for the ancient Greeks could be identified as the nostos or nostalgia, or as creative leisure. Thus, Gonter Grass refers to both malanchy (feeling that arises from the need that feels to be incomplete) and utopia (an idea born of conceiving an ideal place) seem to be interrelated to each other, being two extremes of the same element.

Likewise, Grass may be referring to the point that both melancholy and utopia are forms of desire that the human directs to that ideal place that he either believes lost (melancholy) or believes he should attain (utopia).

Eduardo Galeano

“Utopia is on the horizon. Two steps, she walks away two steps and the horizon runs ten steps further. I know I’ll never catch up with her. Then what is utopia for? For that, it serves for walking.” (Eduardo Galeano)

For his part, this Argentine writer also emphasizes the mobilizing character of utopia. With its poetic verb, Galeano places the utopia on the horizon to see it in its splendor and perhaps place it at the same distance as the rainbow, and just as the rainbow will move away as we approach.

The writer also declares his awareness of the unattainable nature of utopia, and at the same time thoughtfully wonders what it serves then if he cannot reach it, and immediately answers that the usefulness of it is precisely that, to make the human to keep moving and move towards those things he yearns for, so that he can conceive of a much more human and hospitable world for our species, which seems to have evolved to the opposite point.

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Image source: wikipedia.org