“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”
"Dreams," from the anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, ed. Arna Bontemps (1941)
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Langston Hughes 79
American writer and social activist 1902–1967Related quotes
“They cripple the bird's wing, and then condemn it for not flying as fast as they.”
Malcolm X on Zionism (1964)
“Fly without wings; dream with open eyes.”
Muse II http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/muse-ii/
From the poems written in English
“We must hold fast to the dream that reason will prevail.”
Though sometimes quoted as if he were author of it, the expression "Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible" is one that greatly predates Lown's use of it; it has also been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Jesus and Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, but the earliest published expression yet located seems to have been one by American Baptist minister Rev. Robert Stuart MacArthur in Royal Messages of Cheer and Comfort Beautifully Told (1909) edited by Sarah Conger Robinson, p. 58
A Prescription for Hope (1985)
Context: We must hold fast to the dream that reason will prevail. The world today is full of anguish and dread. As great as is the danger, still greater is the opportunity. If science and technology have catapulted us to the brink of extinction, the same ingenuity has brought humankind to the boundary of an age of abundance.
Never before was it possible to feed all the hungry. Never before was it possible to shelter all the homeless. Never before was it possible to teach all the illiterates. Never before were we able to heal so many afflictions. For the first time science and medicine can diminish drudgery and pain.
Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible. But in order to do the impossible, in the words of Jonathan Schell, we ask "not for our personal survival: we ask only that we be survived. We ask for assurance that when we die as individuals, as we know we must, mankind will live on".
“If dreams of flying are the last hope of freedom, I will pray for wings with my last breath.”
The Crippled God (2011)
“Take these broken wings and learn to fly.”
Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999
