The Enlightenment faith that things are getting a little bit better each decade becomes difficult to support. People recognized that there had… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
These weren't college kids on acid. They were preachers, and bankers, and farmers, and the salt of American society subscribing to ideas… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The thought was, 'We're going to go to California, where the soil is black and ten feet deep, and there are no… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Atheist isn't really the right word because they tended to believe in some sort of Enlightenment, capital 'N' Nature kind of god.… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
don't think I should be in the business of making big pronouncements about where we are now, but I would say that… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The Oneida Perfectionists, along with some of the others, believed that feminism, and abolitionism, and other causes that they pursued in their… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The secular utopians basically said the exact same thing, they just took the Bible out of the equation. The religious and the… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
They [Oneida people] didn't want to fix problems one at a time. If someone invited them to a feminist convention, their answer… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
There are Harvard grads, free thinkers, feminists, abolitionists, well-to-do people who want to go write poetry and live on a farm and… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The Jacksonian era is generally talked about in terms of individualism, and the development of free market capitalism, and Victorian prudery. It… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Utopians don't say, 'The world's corrupt, women make less money, people of color are oppressed at every turn.' You don't list the… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Because the utopian's worldview was framed around moving toward this perfected future, it helped stimulate the private exertions that add up to… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Some people just think utopians are idiots who are imagining rivers of candy and not really engaging with the world's ills, and… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
They're people who probably imagine that they would have had a better time in the past. I wouldn't imagine you'd encounter a… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
But if you'd only ever lived in small wooden house in the middle of wilderness, it sounded much better. Especially because it… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
That to me was one of the most exciting, and weird puzzles of this book: how are the most religious people and… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Some people think God is going to guide those humans. The Oneida community and the Shakers both believed that they had received… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
So there's that change of general consciousness, and then there's this boom after the war, this expansion into the West. It was… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The biggest names in the Transcendentalist literary circle visited the community regularly, and supported it, but they couldn't live there happily. Hawthorne… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Utopian fiction is really boring. I had to read a lot of it, and it's not that much fun. But they're fascinating to me… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The fatal flaw of most utopian visions is that they're fundamentally static, and that's not a comfortable place for humans to live. Fourier was… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
There are two instances I studied in which a community moved, amazingly, into an preexisting village built by other, earlier communalists. The Rappites were… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The religious and irreligious are agreeing with each other almost all the time. Their rhetoric is the same, and their plans are the same.… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
These weren't college kids on acid. They were preachers, and bankers, and farmers, and the salt of American society subscribing to ideas that now… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The thought was, 'We're going to go to California, where the soil is black and ten feet deep, and there are no rocks, and… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
But if you'd only ever lived in small wooden house in the middle of wilderness, it sounded much better. Especially because it provided intense… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Atheist isn't really the right word because they tended to believe in some sort of Enlightenment, capital 'N' Nature kind of god. But these… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
I was really interested in 20th century communalism and alternative communities, the boom of communes in the 60s and 70s. That led me back… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
Because the utopian's worldview was framed around moving toward this perfected future, it helped stimulate the private exertions that add up to social progress.… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
The thing that had fueled these utopian communities was a literal belief, and not just a general sense of optimism, that the earth was… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
They [Oneida people] didn't want to fix problems one at a time. If someone invited them to a feminist convention, their answer would have… — Christine Jennings Copy Share Image
![“They [Oneida people] didn't want to fix problems one at a time. If someone invited them to a feminist convention, their answer would have been, 'In the new world women will have total equality, so lets spend our energy creating that whole new world.' And to their credit, the women at Oneida…” quote by Christine Jennings](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a98/christine-jennings-20527_answers_they-oneida-people-didn-t-want-to-fix-pr_1079802.jpg)
![“The biggest names in the Transcendentalist literary circle visited the community regularly, and supported it, but they couldn't live there happily. Hawthorne [who was briefly a resident] left for reasons I'm sure make sense to you; he couldn't get enough writing done in a house full of people…” quote by Christine Jennings](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/603/christine-jennings-20527_arguing_the-biggest-names-in-the-transcendentali_2253748.jpg)
![“Utopian fiction is really boring. I had to read a lot of it, and it's not that much fun. But they're fascinating to me as historical documents. Cabet [Icaria's founder and author of the utopian novel, Travels in Icaria], is writing in the 1830s, and his idea of the perfect society reveals a lot…” quote by Christine Jennings](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ac0/christine-jennings-20527_book_utopian-fiction-is-really-boring-i-had-t_68118.jpg)
