Negative Utopia Quotes

“There could be nothing more paradoxical in historical terms than this change: man, at the begining of the industrial age, when in reality did not possess the means for a world in whic the table was set for all who wanted to eat, when he lived in a world in which there were economic reasons for slavery, war, and exploitation in which man only sensed the possibilities of his new sciene and of its application to technique and to production- nevertheless man at the begining of modern development was full of hope. Fourhundred years later when all these hopes are realizable, when man can produce enough for everybody, when war has become unnecessary because technical progress can give any country more wealth than can territorial conquest, when this globe is in the process of becoming as unified as a continent was fourhundred years ago, at the very moment when man is on the verge of realizing his hope, he begins to lose it.

Afterword on George Orwell’s 1984”
― Erich Fromm, 1984