Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]

Essay (1943-12-20), “Can Socialists Be Happy?” “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper [as John Freeman]
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The date given for this article varies: the issue of Tribune it was published in was 1943-12-24, but Orwell apparently received a check for the work on 1943-12-20. Note this was not the regular "As I Please" column Blair (Orwell) did for Tribune, which he also wrote for that issue, but a special article written under a different alias for unconfirmed reasons. The title is sometimes given as "Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun."