“I dream, therefore I exist.”

— August Strindberg

Last update April 24, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I dream, therefore I exist." by August Strindberg?

August Strindberg photo

August Strindberg 10

Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist and painter 1849–1912

Related quotes

“I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.”

David Gerrold book The Man Who Folded Himself

Source: The Man Who Folded Himself (1973), p. 79

“I desire therefore I exist.”

Angela Carter book The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Source: The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

“I fight, therefore I exist.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

No clear citations of this to Ben-Gurion have been located. A very early variant of this idea (which plays upon the statement of René Descartes "Cogito ergo sum" — "I think, therefore I exist") is found in Die Weimarer Reichsverfassung http://books.google.gr/books?id=VRBAAAAAYAAJ&q= (1922) by Leo Wittmayer, p. 255, a work about the Weimar Constitution, where Wittmayer speaks against the attitude, while stating it in Latin: "bello ergo sum".
Misattributed

“Existence is violent, I exist, therefore I'm violent… in that way.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

“I rebel — therefore we exist.”

Albert Camus book The Rebel

The Rebel (1951)

“The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black goddess within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), p. 38

“One of the few downsides to being awakened is that we no longer require sleep; therefore we also no longer dream. It's a shame, because if I could dream, I know I'd dream about you.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

“I think the Holy Grail is a dream that men have, a dream that the world can be made perfect. And if it existed, then we'd all know the dream can't come true.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

Thomas of Hookton, p. 192
The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

“There is nothing enduring, permanent, either in me or out of me, nothing but everlasting change. I know of no existence, not even of my own. I know nothing and am nothing. Images — pictures — only are, pictures which wander by without anything existing past which they wander, without any corresponding reality which they might represent, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these images, or rather a confused image of these images. All reality is transformed into a strange dream, without a world of which the dream might be, or a mind that might dream it. Contemplation is a dream; thought, the source of all existence and of all that I fancied reality, of my own existence, my own capacities, is a dream of that dream.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 60
The Vocation of Man (1800), Knowledge

“The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us-the poet-whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary awareness and demand, the implementation of that freedom.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

"Poetry is Not a Luxury"
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)

Related topics