Dystopia Quotes

“وجود خودم را حس می‌کنم. اما تنها بعضی چیزها وجود خودشان را حس می‌کنند و از فردیتشان آگاهند؛ چشمی که خاری در آن رفته، انگشت ملتهب و دندان چرک کرده!
چشم، انگشت و دندان سالم حس نمی‌شوند، انگار که وجود ندارند.
آیا خودآگاهی به وضوح چیزی جز نوعی بیماری نیست؟”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“من فقط یکی چیز می‌خواهم و آن چیز «او»ست. می‌خواهم که او هر لحظه، هر دقیقه کنارم باشد، فقط با من.
تمام چیزهایی که همین حالا درباره‌ی وحدت نوشتم همه‌اش بی‌ربط است، چیزی نیست که باید باشد، دلم می‌خواهد تمامش را خط بزنم، پاره کنم و دور بریزم.
چون می‌دانم (شاید کفر باشد، اما واقعیت است): جشن فقط با او جشن می‌شود، فقط زمانی که او کنارم و شانه‌به‌شانه‌ام باشد. بدون او، خورشید فردا چیزی نیست جز دایره‌ای حلبی و آسمان، حلبی‌ای که رنگ آبی به آن زده باشند و خودم هم، چیزی نیستم جز تکه‌ای حلبی!”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“آدم مثل یک کتاب است: تا آخرین صفحه‌اش نمی‌دانی پایان کارش چطور رقم می‌خورد. در غیر این‌صورت ارزش خواندن ندارد...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“I remember rivers that no longer exist. Forests that named themselves. And humans who still listened.
– Yari”
― Ray High, Ray High’s Fluss der Zeit – Das Vermächtnis der Ewigkeit

“To be submortal is to stand in the shadow of eternity—caught between the fragility of life and the illusion of forever.”
― Scott S. Elliott, Submortal

“Life’s a no-rules cage fight.” That’s what Alex used to say—back when he still had fire in his eyes, when it sounded like a creed. Now Lena repeated the words to herself and they echoed hollow.”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“That’s how they keep you quiet. Forget the shape of your soul, and you start mistaking silence for peace.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“They’ve turned language into a weapon. Make people afraid of the truth and they’ll burn it themselves.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“I want the next goddamn tyrant who tries to burn the past down to choke on the ash.”
― Elijah Stepanovich, The Heir of Ash and Thunder

“We must not take anyone else's karma upon ourselves, not even in small matters," the brigadier continued. "Especially now in our renewed, postwar world. Take a look at the Eurasian continent: after the collapse of the ideological, geopolitical, and technological utopias, it was finally plunged back into the blessed and enlightened Middle Ages. The world returned to humans scale. Nations found themselves. Man ceased to be the sum of the technology around him. Mass production is living out its final years. There aren't two identical nails beaten into humanity's head. Man regained a sense of the things, started to eat healthy grub and ride horses again. Genetic engineering helps man to feel his true size. Man has regained his faith in the transcendental. Regained his sense of time. We're not rushing anywhere anymore. Most importantly-we understand that there can be no technological heaven on earth. And, in broader terms, no heaven at all. Earth has been given to us as an island of overcoming. Everyone chooses what to overcome and how to overcome it. And they make that choice themselves!”
― Vladimir Sorokin, Telluria

“Of course, everyone is like, da da da, evil corporations, oh they're so bad, we all say that, and we all know they control everything. I mean, it's not great, because who knows what evil shit they're up to. Everyone feels bad about that. But they're the only way to get all this stuff, and it's no good getting pissy about it, because they're still going to control everything whether you like it or not. Plus, they keep like everyone in the world employed , so it's not like we could do without them. And it's really great to know everything about everything whenever we want, to have it just like, in our brain, just sitting there.”
― M.T. Anderson (Author)

“This is the language called BASIC," she said. On the paper, it said:

002110 Goto 013500
013500 Peek 16388, 256
013510 Poke 16589, 256

She read it to me. I could tell the numbers fine.
"So what does that mean?" I asked.
"It's the first thing my dad teaches the students on the first day," she said. "It means, 'I came, I saw, I conquered.”
― M.T. Anderson (Author)

“To most of the roles society offers, I say, “You are made for more than that.” We inhabit, in the words of Ivan Illich, “a world into which nobody fits who has not been crushed and molded by sixteen years of formal education.” The very idea of having to be at a job “on time” was appalling to early industrial laborers, who also refused the numbing repetitiveness of industrial work until the specter of starvation compelled them. What truly self-respecting person would spend a life marketing soda pop or chewing gum unless they were somehow broken by repeated threats to survival? To participate in our society’s depredations is an indignity. [...]

Very few of society’s usual positions can accommodate the enormous creative life-force of an unbroken human being. To keep the world under control demands that we bottle up this creative force and expend as much of it as possible in harmless ways—harmless to the status quo, that is, though not to the individual. All the addicts and alcoholics I have known—all of them!—are blessed (or cursed) with what seems to be an exceptional creative energy that is burned up in their addiction. Other people channel it into obsessions and compulsions, hobbies, nervous tics, excessive exercise, overeating, work, and the like, contributing to a more dilute version of the addict’s sense of life betrayed.

When we submit to lesser lives, we cannot avoid a sense of self-betrayal: that we are complicit in the plunder of our most precious possession. The roles society offers do not befit the divine beings that we are. It is not merely that a career as a retail clerk is beneath my dignity; it is beneath anyone’s dignity. No one is meant to do such work for very long.”
― Charles Eisenstein, The Ascent of Humanity

“النظامُ يطلب الطاعة… لا الفهم!
وحين نفهم، نُصبحُ خطيرين عليهم!”
― بندر علي, ‫شقوق: رواية خيالية نفسية بطابع فلسفي‬

“النظام يطلب الطاعة… لا الفهم!
وحين تفهم، تُصبح خطيرًا عليهم!”
― بندر علي, ‫شقوق: رواية خيالية نفسية بطابع فلسفي‬

“You don’t need to die to feel like a ghost in your own life.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where Is Death: A Cosmic Horror Tale About Six Broken Strangers and the Search for Death, Who’s Gone Missing Without a Trace

“The world without death wasn’t a blessing. It wasn’t a miracle. It was a sentence.”
― Arabella Sveinsdottir, Where Is Death: A Cosmic Horror Tale About Six Broken Strangers and the Search for Death, Who’s Gone Missing Without a Trace

“Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion.”
― William Gibson

“إن الهدف الأساسي من الحرب هو الدمار، ليس بالضرورة بحياة الناس بل بنتاج العمل الإنساني، فالحرب هي الطريقة الوحيدة لتبديد وإهدار موارد كان من شأنها إذا استخدمت في ما ينفع البشرية أن تعود عليهم بالخير والرفاهية، وكذلك أن تجعلهم على المدى البعيد أكثر وعيًا وإدراكًا للأمور من حولهم.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“فعندما نمتلك كافة سبل القوة لن نكون بحاجة للعلم. ستنتهي كل الفروق بين الجمال والقبح، ولن يكون هناك حب استطلاع وتمتع بالحياة ولن يكون هناك رغبة في مباهج وفتن الحياة التي ستُدمر تمامًا.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“You don’t get it, babe,” he said, still looking at the sky. “World War III already started.”
― Slava Pilotoff

“You don’t get it, babe,” he said, still looking at the sky. “World War III already started.” She propped herself up on one elbow, confused. Around them families picnicked, kids ran on the playground—what war? But Alex wasn’t kidding.”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“People always think the best is still ahead.”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“Husband . . . Father . . .” her mom mocked. “You think it’s the same man. But war slices people open. You married one man. The one crawling back from war? That’s a zombie. Same face, but inside—just rot.”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“The war didn’t break everything. It just kept unraveling afterward. The men dragged it back home with them...”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“Lena squeezed her eyes shut until white flashes popped. And in that moment she knew: nothing would ever be the same again. Childhood was over, and the world would never go back to what it was.”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“Being with him was like smashing against a stone wall—shattering into pieces on impact. He stood unshakable, all steel and rage, hearing nothing but the roar of war inside his head.”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“This was what they’d been told all along in the army: “It’s us or them. War’s coming. No way around it.” And now the day had come, and in Alex’s eyes it felt not just inevitable but right.”
― Slava Pilotoff, The Russian Gladiator: A Psychological Dystopian Thriller Set in Modern Russia

“Hello, Timron,” Carlos said. “You look… unwell.”
“You look dead,” Timron answered.”
― H Lawrence Dearborn, Precept: Frequency

“So when you write a book like "The Handmaid's Tale" in 1985, what you're hoping as a citizen is that it will become obsolete. And in the '90s, right after the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold War ended, it appeared that it might become obsolete. But then things turned around and went in the other direction. So it's been quite frightening to watch those kinds of changes.

And I think one of the things that has happened is that people of my age and older who remember the effects of the Great Depression and World War II have died out, and younger people don't remember what totalitarianisms were really like. So they get off on collecting, you know, German buttons, but they don't remember what really happened. And when you do remember what really happened, you were quite appalled by what's going on in Ukraine because it's happened before. And you were quite appalled by the polarization in American society, which also happened before in the 1930s. So yes. The patterns that are alarming - and as I've often said, I didn't put anything into "The Handmaid's Tale" that has not happened sometime somewhere before.”
― Margaret Atwood