“To read a distant text, distant in space, time, or conceptual world – is a utopian task…The task is one whose initial intention cannot be fulfilled in the development of its activity and which has to be satisfied with approximations essentially contradictory to the purpose which had started it…”
– Ortega y Gasset –
“In that sense the activity of language is in many particular ways utopian: One can never convey what one wants to convey.”
– A. L. Becker –
“it is deficient in the sense that it says less than it wishes to say,
and it is exuberant in the sense that ‘it says more than it plans’
This utopian characteristic of language is a source of flexibility that results from signs that are simultaneously deficient and exuberant.”
– Yair Neuman –
All my Words are Silent 