I start from the difference in Italian between “utopico” and “utopistico” (the first understood as a high ideal and the second as merely airy-fairy). Google Translate gives utopian versus utopian as the English equivalent, while The Roget’s Thesaurus has utopianistic, to indicate “a person inclined to be imaginative or idealistic but impractical.” Such divergence signals the problematic sense of these terms. I see elements of utopianism in both its positive and negative meanings within present social, political and cultural movements, events and processes. To save the double meaning of utopia, combining “utopico” (a guiding idea from the present to the future) and “utopistico” (secluded from any relation with reality), I propose to restore a positive meaning to the oxymoron of “utopic democracy”, accepting imperfect forms of democracy which host elements of utopian hope.