Cloud Cuckoo Land refers to an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. ("You're living in Cloud Cuckoo Land, mate.") It hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.
The reference comes from The Birds, a play by Aristophanes in which Tereus helps Pisthetairos (which can be translated as "Mr. Trusting") and Euelpides ("Mr. Hopeful") erect a perfect city in the clouds, to be named Cloud Cuckoo Land (Νεφελοκοκκυγία or Nephelokokkygia).
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used the word (German Wolkenkuckucksheim) in his publication On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in 1813, as well as later in his main work The World as Will and Representation and in other places. Here, he gave it the figurative sense by reproaching other philosophers for only talking about Cloud-cuckoo-land. Fellow German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche refers to the term in his essay "On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense."
Read more about Cloud Cuckoo Land: Uses in Politics, Other Uses
Famous quotes containing the words cloud, cuckoo and/or land:
“Humorists are always pessimists. They’re reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“The cuckoo is a lazy bird,
She never builds a nest,
She makes herself busy
By singing to the rest.”
—Unknown. The Cuckoo (l. 9–12)
“Come, cuddle your head on my shoulder, dear,
Your head like the golden-rod,
And we will go sailing away from here
To the beautiful land of Nod.”
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1855–1919)