Quotes about dreams
page 26

“Who means ill, dreams ill.”

Giovanni Boccaccio book The Decameron

Chi mal ti vuol, mal ti sogna.
Ninth Day, Seventh Story (tr. J. M. Rigg)
The Decameron (c. 1350)

“The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1960s, First Inaugural Address (1969)

“You don't get something for nothing
You can't have freedom for free.
You won't get wise
With the sleep still in your eyes
No matter what your dream might be.
-- Something for Nothing (1976)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Sleep, Freedom

“So we're led by denial like lambs to the slaughter
Serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water
And the old farm road's a four-lane that leads to the mall
And our dreams are all guillotines waiting to fall.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Subdivision
Song lyrics

Water, Waiting

“Good evening, daddy
I know you’ve heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Boogie: 1 a.m."
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

“It is impossible to put into words what we have been through. One thing is clear, what happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans ran twice from the ghetto. One of our companies held out for 40 minutes and another - for more than six hours. The mine set in the "Brushmakers" area exploded. Few of our companies, has attacked the Germans that got away. Our losses in manpower are minimal. That is also an achievement. Y [Yehiel] fell. He fell a hero at the machine-gun. I feel that great things are happening and what we have dared to do is of great, enormous importance….”

Mordechai Anielewicz (1919–1943) Leader of the Jewish Combat Organization

Feeling, Loss

“What is it that is done to our children that their puberty should deform them? They have the joy of movement; they have an enterprising curiosity; they are ready for sensible self-denial; they dream ahead, and they have a faithful memory, and, above all, great compassion. […] The well-meaning educator who flatters and humours the young not only does a disservice to the community, but also damages the individual by depriving him of the opportunities of self-discovery.”

Kurt Hahn (1886–1974) German educator

Quoted by Donald McLachlan in Kurt Hahn: A Life Span in Education and Politics, ed. Herman Röhrs, 1966, tr. 1970, ISBN 0710068859, §1, p. 8.

Children, Education, Faith, Communication

“I sat at the computer at work, debugging. I was bored. It was afternoon. I was twenty-two. It was June. Along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, thunderheads move in almost every afternoon between May and early July. They materialize, darken the day, spit a few drops, open the sky with lightning, then disappear like so many dreams.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

Mountain

“Those of your fellow countrymen who believe that France dreams or has dreams of the political or economic annihilation of Germany are mistaken…no reasonable Frenchman has ever dreamt of annexing a parcel of German territory.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Letter to British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald (25 February 1924), quoted in Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France's Bid for Power in Europe 1914-1940 (London: Arnold, 1995), p. 101.

“My veins are afire with music,
Her eyes have kissed me, my body is turned to light;
I shall dream to her secret heart tonight…”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Secret, Music, Kiss, Light

“Humans have super senses that appear sometimes in their dreams and sometimes in their daily lives”

Ali Al-Wardi (1913–1995) Iraqi sociologist

Sense, Appearance

“Now we stand face to face—but who can tell
we shan't wake up and learn it was a dream?”

Nguyễn Du The Tale of Kieu

Source: The Tale of Kiều (1813), Lines 443–444

Learning

“Theories rarely arise as patient inferences forced by accumulated facts. Theories are mental constructs potentiated by complex external prods (including, in idealized cases, a commanding push from empirical reality). But the prods often include dreams, quirks, and errors—just as we may obtain crucial bursts of energy from foodstuffs or pharmaceuticals of no objective or enduring value. Great truth can emerge from small error. Evolution is thrilling, liberating, and correct. And Macrauchenia is a litoptern.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"Mr. Sophia's Pony", pp. 157 - 158
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Truth, Error, Reality

“I see a picture by the lamp's flicker…
Isn't it strange how dreams fade and shimmer?”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Discovery (1984)

“That children dream not the first half year, that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams, dreams out of the Ivory gate, and visions before midnight.”

Thomas Browne (1605–1682) English polymath

On Dreams

Men, Children, Country

“Pursue your dreams with passion, hard work and dedication.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

How I made it: CNR Rao, Scientist (2010)

Passion

“The prototypical act of the modern intellectual is his abstracting himself from the life of the family. It is an act that has something about it of ritual thaumaturgy—at the beginning of our intellectual careers we are like nothing so much as those young members of Indian tribes who have had a vision or a dream which gives them power on condition that they withdraw from the ordinary life of the tribe. By intellectuality we are freed from the thralldom to the familial commonplace, from the materiality and concreteness by which it exists, the hardness of the cash and hardness of getting it, the inelegance and intractability of family things. It gives us power over intangibles and imponderables such as Beauty and Justice, and it permits us to escape the cosmic ridicule which in our youth we suppose is inevitably directed at those who take seriously the small concerns of the quotidian world, which we know to be inadequate and doomed by the very fact that it is so absurdly conditioned—by things, habits, local and temporary customs, and the foolish errors and solemn absurdities of the men of the past.”

Lionel Trilling (1905–1975) American academic

“George Orwell and the politics of truth,” The Opposing Self (1950), p. 163
The Opposing Self (1950)

Life, Men, Youth, World

“We Europeans have to toil to achieve it, at least as a transitional stage, for it is what we feed our dreams upon. These Orientals [from India] have it in their blood, perhaps because they spend their lives I the sun. We poor wretched Europeans must sacrifice body and soul for even a shadow of it… It is not a question of trying to reproduce objective features, only of good practice for the fingers and for the perceptive faculty, and that too is very useful. You must have read how Van Gogh was always getting his brother to send him drawings to copy. And how Rembrandt used to copy Indian an Italian pictures. Not of course, because they were short of material, but to get 'du corps'. So one should be always drawing… Oh, you'd love the Indians. The pure, Aryan Indians, not those one could see in Berlin, whose forms had become rigid and sterile through mingling with the Chinese.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 1919/20; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 224-225
1916 - 1919

Love, Soul, Question, Reading

“"You don't know very much about women, do you?" she said. "Women aren't interested in poets' dreams. They are interested in facts. It doesn't even matter whether the facts are true or not, as long as they match the other facts without leaving a rough seam."”

William Faulkner book The Town

Eula Varner Snopes to Gavin Stevens in Ch. 15
The Town (1957)

Women

“Obviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Requiem for a Dream (1978)

Life, Truth, Soul, Heart

“[Wild] with a dream of wildness.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

"The Expensive Moment"

“Christian doctors reproach the old learned rabbis, for their vain faith, and carnal desire of a glorious, temporal, outward Christ, who should set up their temple-worship all over the world. Vanity indeed, and learned blindness enough?
But nevertheless, in these condemners of rabbinic blindness, St. Paul's words are remarkably verified, viz., "Wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself, for thou that judgest dost the same thing." For, take away all that from Christ which Christian doctors call enthusiasm, suppose him not to be an inward birth, a new life and Spirit within us, but only an outward, separate, distant heavenly prince, no more really in us, than our high cathedrals are in the third heavens, but only by an invisible hand from his throne on high, some way or other raising and helping great scholars, or great temporal powers, to make a rock in every nation for his church to stand upon; suppose all this (which is the very marrow of modern divinity) and then you have that very outward Christ, and that very outward kingdom, which the carnal Jew dreamed of, and for the sake of which the spiritual Christ was then nailed to the cross, and is still crucified by the new risen Jew in the Christian church.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

¶ 159 - 160.
An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (1761)

Life, World, Faith, Way

“In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities.”

János Arany (1817–1882) Hungarian writer

As quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 11

Love, Courageous, Hope, Good Night

“Students’ role doesn’t end in the classroom. Student-led movements have always been a part in changing history and fulfilling peoples’ dreams of achieving freedom and dignity”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

interview after her speech
2010s, Nobel Prize winner highlights women’s role in Arab Spring (2011)

People, History, Freedom, Change

“If dreams of flying are the last hope of freedom, I will pray for wings with my last breath.”

Steven Erikson book The Crippled God

The Crippled God (2011)

Hope, Freedom, Flying

“Prometheus… found the human race in a pitiable condition. They saw, he says, but they really saw not: they heard, but they understood not: they were like the phantoms of our dreams, and their labour was useless and unprofitable.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I

“I’ve been walking my mind to an easy time,
My back turned towards the sun.
Lord knows the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around.
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line,
To talk about things to come.
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Fire and Rain"
Song lyrics, Sweet Baby James (1970)

Time, Sun, Flying

“If you don't have massive dreams, you might as well stay in bed.”

Sonny Bill Williams (1985) New Zealand rugby player and heavyweight boxer

Williams while speaking on his sporting aspirations. Time gets close for SBW to make call http://www.smh.com.au/sport/boxing/time-gets-close-for-sbw-to-make-call-20130206-2dyud.html, by Phil Lutton, Sydney Morning Herald, dated 7 February 2013.

“Way over yonder is a place I have seen
In a garden of wisdom from some long ago dream.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

Way Over Yonder
Song lyrics, Tapestry (1971)

Wisdom, Way

“What matters most is whether or not India will continue to remain a secular state committed to socialism or become a Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, preserving the Ram Setu and other relics associated with Hinduism. The choice is between an India of the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru on the one side (secular), and those of Vir Savarkar and Guru Golwalkar on the other (Hindutva). By no stretch of the imagination can it be called secular. We have to choose between remaining what we are or opt to become a Hindu Rashtra.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

Quoted in Do you want India to be a Hindu rashtra?, 25 April 2009, 21 December 2013, Hindustan Times http://www.hindustantimes.com/editorial-views-on/viewscolumnskhushwantsingh/do-you-want-india-to-be-a-hindu-rashtra/article1-404035.aspx,

Imagination

“"I knew him, ere the roots of bitterness
"Had grown to putrid cancer in his soul.
"Then Revelation's light gleamed o'er his mind
"In strange fantastic dreams of future bliss,
"He saw the dawn, and this was quite enough”

John Lyon (poet) (1803–1889) Scottish Latter Day Saint poet and hymn writer

The Harp of Zion (1853)

Soul, Light, Future

“The stars are dreaming
but they are laughing
I see myself in the smile of a polar bear
while turning the pages of an arctic sky
reading the delirious lines that
foretell the sovereignty of language
and the rule of invisible birds”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

It's In the Wind (1977) "Ceremonies In A Polar Garden"
1970s

Smile, Star, Bird, Reading

“Then to the King's Theatre, where we saw Midsummer's Night's Dream, which I had never seen before, nor shall ever again, for it is the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

September 29, 1662
Diary

Life, Night

“The struggle for existence in a universe we did not choose, and the burden of being a member of the only race which values objective, verifiable truth as an end in itself, makes us sometimes long for escape from reality -- in some cases through a literature of the fantastic, of marvelous dream worlds, of free-ranging fantasy. But we must not confuse that necessary escape with what is real. Permit me to suggest to the reader that it is a waste of his time and energy to play with fantasies that lack the literary and aesthetic charm of poetry and imaginative prose fiction.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Orage and New Age Consciousness", private letter, February 1977, published on National Vanguard http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=6657 (October 25, 2005) <br class="br">1970s

Truth, World, Imagination, Literature

“Imagination is perhaps the most decisive characteristic of mankind. My dream is the imagination of space – to change the optical impression of the world of objects by a transcendental arithmetic progression of the inner being. That is the precept. In principal any alteration of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. Whether such alteration causes excitement or boredom in the spectator is for you to decide.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), p. 16

World, Imagination, Decision, Strong

“We must work assiduously and with determined boldness to remove from the body politic this cancerous disease of discrimination which is preventing our democratic and Christian health from being realized. Then and only then will we be able to bring into full realization the dream of our American democracy-a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men do not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character, where they recognize that the basic thing about a man is not his specific but his fundamentum; a dream of a place where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of all human personality, and men will dare to live together as brothers-that is the dream.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)

Men, Health, Disease, Color

“My heart beats more for a rougher, more ordinary, more vulgar art that does not live in a poetic, fairy-tale dream but admits the fearful, the common, the magnificent, the ordinary, the banal grotesque in life. An art that can always be directly present to us when life is at its most real.. [ on the same day he noted:].. Martin thinks there will be a war. Russia England France against Germany. We agreed that it would be no bad thing for our rather demoralized present-day civilization if everyone's instincts and drives were to be harnessed to one cause..”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckmann's Diary, 9 January, 1909, in Leben in Berlin: Tagebuch, 1908-1909, ed. Hans Kinkel; R. Piper & Co., Munich and Zurich, 1983, pp. 22-23; as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 99
1900s - 1920s

Life, War, Fear, Art

“Beauty, brains, and a complete psycho. My dream girl.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

Det. Mike Logan in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Beauty, Girl

“He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

About Ronan
The Raven Cycle Series, The Dream Thieves (2013)

Angels

“He was up in Wyoming,
And drew a bull no man could ride.
He promised her he'd turn out,
Well it turned out that he lied.
And their dreams that they'd been livin',
In the California sand,
Died right there beside him in Cheyenne.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

The Beaches of Cheyenne, written by Dan Roberts, Bryan Kennedy, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Fresh Horses (1995)

“But this is as a dream, — the plough has pass'd
Where the stag bounded, and the day has looked
On the green twilight of the forest-trees.
This Oak has no companion!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

- - -
The Oak from The London Literary Gazette (19th April 1823) Fragments
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Tree

“Peace can be reached through meditation on the knowledge which dreams give. Peace can also be reached through concentration upon that which is dearest to the heart.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Mahābhāṣya

Peace, Knowledge, Heart

“Only in clouds and dreams I felt those souls
In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod,
From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls
Into the vast of God.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

"Dusk"
By Still Waters (1906)

God, Soul

“I have a vision of India: an India free of hunger and fear, an India free of illiteracy and want. I dream of an India that is prosperous, strong and caring. An India, that regains a place of honour in the comity of great nations.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

Vajpayee during his 1999 Independence Day speech. Quoted from Vajpayee No More: Here Are His Five Most Powerful Quotes https://swarajyamag.com/insta/vajpayee-no-more-here-are-his-five-most-powerful-quotes Swaraja, Aug 16 2018

Hunger, Fear, Strong

“And here at length is somewhat of revenge:
For man's most golden dreams of pride and power
Are vain as any woman-dreams of love;
Both end in weary brow and wither'd heart,
And the grave closes over those whose hopes
Have lain there long before.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Love’s Last Lesson
The Golden Violet (1827)

Love, Hope, Revenge, Heart

“Each of us has an inner dream that we can unfold if we will just have the courage to admit what it is. And the faith to trust our own admission. The admitting is often very difficult.”

Julia Cameron book The Artist's Way

The Artist's Way (1992)

Faith, Courage

“Sometimes,” said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, “dreams are all that separate us from the machines.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 43 (p. 474)

“Drifting a dream
On a mystical sea…
A wishful emotion
A drop in the ocean
A hush in the air
You can feel anywhere
In the cool twilight
Of a tropical night…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Crises (1983)

Feeling, Sea, Night

“A teacher?”
“Yes. He argued that we are the gods, that we create our own destiny. That what we are determines what will become of us. In a peasantlike vernacular, we all paint ourselves into corners from which here is no escape simply by being ourselves and interacting with other selves.”
“Interesting.”
“Well. Yes. There is god of sorts, Croaker. Do you know? Not a mover and shaker, though. Simply a negator. An ender of tales. He has a hunger that cannot be sated. The universe itself will slide down his maw.”
“Death?”
“I do not want to die, Croaker. All that I am shrieks against the unrighteousness of death. All that I am, was, and probably will be, is shaped by my passion to evade the end of me.” She laughed quietly, but there was a thread of hysteria there. She gestured, indicating the shadowed killing ground below. “I would have built a world in which I was safe. And the cornerstone of my citadel would have been death.”
The end of the dream was drawing close. I could not imagine a world without me in it, either. And the inner me was outraged. Is outraged. I have no trouble imagining someone becoming obsessed with escaping death.
“I understand.”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

“Maybe. We’re all equals at the dark gate, no? The sands run for us all. Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!”
Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 39, “A Guest at Charm” (p. 625)

Life, Death, Hunger, God

“Mean Streets dealt with the American Dream, according to which everybody thinks they can get rich quick, and if they can't do it by legal means then they'll do it by illegal ones.”

Martin Scorsese (1942) American film director, screenwriter, producer and actor

Scorsese on Scorsese, "Mean Streets—Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore—Taxi Driver".

Thinking

“A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.”

René Char (1907–1988) 20th-century French poet

Un poète doit laisser des traces de son passage, non des preuves. Seules les traces font rêver.
As quoted in The French-American Review (1976) by Texas Christian University, p. 132
Variant translation: A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Only traces bring about dreams.
As quoted in Popular Dissent, Human Agency, and Global Politics (2000) by Roland Bleiker, p. 50

“Would you be impressed if I said that the dead would help us counting

Every single moment that we waste our time?

All the time we're spending vaccinating this disease

I just get dizzy when I think of all the ways we try to hide our maladies

We wine (We wine!), we dine (We dine!), and everything is fine

Because it's not my fault

Now you're upset because you finally got the notion

That everything you had is spinning down the drain

Oh! Do you mean it when you beg and pray and plead?

Your "Giveittomegiveittomegiveittomegiveittome all those things we need"

And what, pray tell, will you whimper when your number will be called

You'll say "It's not my fault"

I had a dream last night where everyone was trying

Subconsciously I knew it was a lie

And when I woke I knew that it was time to pray

To make amends before the end, before my judgement day

I looked around, I stood alone, I knew what I had to say

I said "It's all my fault"”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"Would You Be Impressed?" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/03/

Lie, Disease, Way, Thinking

“I had a dream I had an awesome dream:
People in the park playing games in the dark.
And what they played was a masquerade.
And from behind of walls of doubt a voice was crying out.

Say you, say me.
Say it for always, that's the way it should be.
Say you, say me.
Say it together, naturally.”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Say You, Say Me.
Song lyrics, Dancing on the Ceiling (1986)

People, Way, Game, Nature

“Let us go on committing suicide by working among our people, and let them dream life just as the lake dreams the sky.”

Miguel de Unamuno book San Manuel Bueno, Mártir

San Manuel Bueno, Mártir (1933), Prologue

Life, People, Suicide

“Be sceptical, question authority, be a rebel. Do not conform and don’t be ordinary. Remember, all human progress is the result of far-sighted people challenging orthodoxy, tradition and rich, powerful, vested interests. Be daring, show imagination, take risks. Fight against the greatest human rights violation of all: free market capitalism, which has created a world divided into rich and poor, where hundreds of millions of people are malnourished, homeless, without clean drinking water and dying from hunger and preventable diseases. Don’t accept the world as it is. Dream about what the world could be – then help make it happen.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Honorary doctorate acceptance speech, 26 July 2010 http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/07/26/be-sceptical-and-daring-peter-tatchells-honorary-doctorate-acceptance-speech/

Hunger, People, World, Disease

“Actually, art and magic are pretty much synonymous. I would imagine that this all goes back to the phenomenon of representation, when, in our primordial past, some genius or other actually flirted upon the winning formula of “This means that.” Whether “this” was a voice or “that” was a mark upon a dry wall or “that” was a guttural sound, it was that moment of representation. That actually transformed us from what we were into what we would be. It gave us the possibility, all of a sudden, of language. And when you have language, you can describe pictorially or verbally the strange and mystifying world that you see around you, and it’s probably not long before you also realize that, hey, you can just make stuff up. The central art of enchantment is weaving a web of words around somebody. And we would’ve noticed very early on that the words we are listening to alter our consciousness, and using the way they can transform it, take it to places we’ve never dreamed of, places that don’t exist.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

The Believer interview (2013)

World, Art, Way, Imagination

“A lawyer's dream of heaven: every man reclaimed his own property at the resurrection, and each tried to recover it from all his forefathers.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler http://books.google.pt/books?id=zltaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22A+lawyer's+dream+of+heaven:%22&dq=%22A+lawyer's+dream+of+heaven:%22&hl=pt-PT&sa=X&ei=_LPRUvmtGa_b7AbdjoCADQ&ved=0CFgQ6AEwBjgK, compiled and edited by ‎A.T. Bartholomew (1934), p. 27

“The first time, we did not know what change would look like. Now we do. The first time, we did not know Barack Obama. Now we do. Which dream will we carry into 2016? The American dream or Obama's dream? The future is not in my hands. It's not even in Obama's hands. The future is in your hands.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Documentary films, 2016: Obama's America (2012)

Change, Time, Future

“How often is it a phantom woman who draws the man from the way he meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when he wakens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the further will he have been hurried down the wrong way, for those who only run after little things will not go far. His love may now sink into passion, perhaps only to stain its wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.”

J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish writer

Source: The Little Minister (1891), Ch. 1 : The Love-Light

Love, Hunger, God, Way

“We are today living out the script for America and the world that was dreamt up not by Obama but by Obama's father. How do I know this? Because Obama says so himself. Reflect for a moment on the title of his book: it's not Dreams of My Father but rather Dreams from My Father. In other words, Obama is not writing a book about his father's dreams; he is writing a book about the dreams that he got from his father.Think about what this means. The most powerful country in the world is being governed according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s—a polygamist who abandoned his wives, drank himself into stupors, and bounced around on two iron legs (after his real legs had to be amputated because of a car crash caused by his drunk driving). This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son. The son is the one who is making it happen, but the son is, as he candidly admits, only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is being governed by a ghost.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The Roots of Obama's Rage (2010), Ch. 10: The Last Anti-Colonial

Books, World, Cars, Rage

“The philosopher does not just ‘play’ with metaphors: his play is of a ‘formidable seriousness’, for it is designed to oppose modernity’s hatred for art, to obliterate precisely the opposition between play and seriousness, dream and reality.”

Sarah Kofman (1934–1994) philosopher from France

Source: Nietzsche et la métaphore (1972), p. 18

Art, Reality

“Ah, if men were those superior beings that the utopians of authority like to speak to us of, if we could close our eyes to reality, and live, like them, in a world of dreams and illusions as to the superiority of those who think themselves called to power, perhaps we also should do like them; perhaps we also should believe in the virtues of those who govern.
With virtuous masters, what dangers could slavery offer? Do you remember the Slave-owner of whom we heard so often, hardly thirty years ago? Was he not supposed to take paternal care of his slaves? "He alone," we were told, "could hinder these lazy, indolent, improvident children dying of hunger. How could he crush his slaves through hard labor, or mutilate them by blows, when his own interest lay in feeding them well, in taking care of them as much as of his own children! And then, did not 'the law' see to it that the least swerving of a slave-owner from the path of duty was punished?" How many times have we not been told so! But the reality was such that, having returned from a voyage to Brazil, Darwin was haunted all his life by the cries of agony of mutilated slaves, by the sobs of moaning women whose fingers were crushed in thumbscrews!”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Life, Women, Men, Hunger

“Well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn’t dream of interrupting you at golf.”

Harper Lee (1926–2016) American author

On why she has done her best creative thinking while playing golf, as quoted in Time (12 May 1980)

People, Home, Coffee, Thinking

“Every utopia about to be realized resembles a cynical dream.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“The wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

“From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.
They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Light

“The city and the crowd unidealise love; and love, in the young warm heart of a girl, should be a dream apart from all commoner emotions — as sweet and as ethereal as the blush with which it is born and dies. Beauty gives its own gracefulness to love — there must be romance blended with the passion inspired by the very lovely face which the mirror reflected.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Other Gift Books

Love, Beauty, Girl, Passion

“A dream is a creation of the intelligence, the creator being present but not knowing how it will end.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Intelligence

“If you would have some idea of what the probable universe is like, then examine your own dreams, looking for those events which do not have any strong resemblances to the physical events of waking existence. Look for dream individuals with whom you are not acquainted in normally conscious life. Look for landscapes that appear bizarre or alien, for all of these exist somewhere. You have perceived them. They do not exist in the space you know but neither are they non-existant (sic), mere imaginative toys of the dreaming mind, without substance.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 305-306, quoting from Session 235

Life, Imagination, Idea, Strong

“The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Interview in Metaphors No. 7, (1983)

World, Cars

“To these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the people of this Union and the world, I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November 1963: "I will lead and I will do the best I can." But you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the old dream. They will lead you best of all.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Inaugural address (1965)

People, World, Family, Heart

“We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted to battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.”

Robert Ardrey book African Genesis

African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man (1961)

Peace, Angels, Star

“The most significant feature of our histories, however, is the religious zeal felt or exhibited by the swordsmen of Islam before and after the “infidels” who resisted “were sent to hell”, the Brahmans massacred or molested or expelled, idols desecrated, temples demolished, and mosques raised in their stead. The prophet of Islam appears in a dream and bids a sultãn to start on the “holy expedition”, leaving no doubt that the “victory of religion” was assured. Amîr Khusrû was very eloquent about the transformation that was taking place. When the hordes of Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî sacked the temple of Somnath, he exulted, “The sword of Islãm purified the land as the Sun purifies the earth.” His enthusiasm broke all bounds when the same hordes swept over South India: “The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islãm, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustãn by the illumination of its guidance… and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus in which Satanism had prevailed since the time of Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultãn’s destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first expedition to Deogîr, so that the flames of the fight of the law illumine all these unholy countries… God be praised!” One wonders whether the poet of Islam is being honoured or slandered when he is presented in our own times as the pioneer of Secularism. Or, perhaps, Secularism in India has a meaning deeper than that we find in the dictionaries or dissertations on political science. We may not be much mistaken if, seeing its studied exercise in blackening everything Hindu and whitewashing everything Islamic, we suspect that this Secularism is nothing more than the good old doctrine of Islam in disguise.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

God, Religion, Law, Exercises

“Who needs poetry? All of us do. Poetry has always been the voice of the inner self, the carrier of revelations, dreams, and visions that often defy expression in ordinary prose.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time (1975), p. v

“I dream of the damnation I have so amply earned, stolen from me by the indolence of God.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 4: "Easter", p. 56

God

“You will discover definite correlations that exist between the incidence of precognitive dreams and data having to do with the temperature and weather.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 273, quoting from Session 212

Weather

“Body work must be approached with the same respect and attentiveness that one gives to dreams. The body has a wisdom of its own. However slowly and circuitously that wisdom manifests, once it is experienced it is a foundation, a basis of knowing that gives confidence and total support to the ego. To reach its wisdom requires absolute concentration: dropping the mind into the body, breathing into whatever is ready to be released, and allowing the process of expression until the negative, dammed energy is out, making room for the positive energy, genuine Light, to flood in.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 60

Wisdom, Confidence, Support, Light

“When I was young I though I had my own key / I knew exactly what I wanted to be / Now I'm sure / You've boarded up every door
While we're living / The dreams we had as children fade away”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Fade Away from the The Help Album, 1995
B-sides released by Oasis

Children

“I, who believe that every artist should be his own teacher, cannot dream of setting myself up as a professor.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

1860s, Realist Manifesto' - an open letter, 1861

Teachers

“We have revolutionary thought whenever the feeling "life is a dream" becomes geared to an impulse to awaken from it.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Four, p. 83

Life, Feeling

“There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,
And the nightingale sings round it all the day long;
In the time of my childhood 'twas like a sweet dream,
To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Part II. <br class="br"> Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part I-III: The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan

Bird, Singing, Time, Childhood

“This chain of human ancestors was totally unknown to Darwin. He could not have even dreamed of such a flood of proof and truth.”

Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenist

Evolution and Religion in Education (1926), p. 41

Truth

“The life I had dreamed of so often during those hot summers on the farm in Georgia or during what seemed like endless hours on the oil truck with my grandfather, expired as Dr. King expired. As so many of you do, I still know exactly where I was when I heard the news. It was a low moment in our nation's history and a demarcation between hope and hopelessness for many of us.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Life, Hope, History, Summer

“To fall asleep in your embrace,
Land of our dreams, what bliss,
O you our cradle, you our grave,
You the new hope we ever crave,
Peninsula so beautiful,
Finland for aye our all!”

Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) Finnish writer

The Finnish Land.

Beauty, Hope

“In the postmodern tradition, the pseudo-academics behind the concept of white privilege have invented for themselves an artificial, political construct. Political constructs confer power on those who dream them up. For politics is the predatory process through which the figment of sick minds is weaponized.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Demonization Of Whites By Mrs. Bill Gates & Other Dangerous Idiots," https://constitution.com/the-demonization-of-whites-by-mrs-bill-gates-other-dangerous-idiots/ Constitution.com, June 8, 2018 <br class="br">2010s, 2018

“Of all our dreams today there is none more important — or so hard to realise — than that of peace in the world. May we never lose our faith in it or our resolve to do everything that can be done to convert it one day into reality.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Nobel Prize acceptance (1957)

World, Peace, Faith, Reality

“Who knocks?’ ‘I, who was beautiful,
Beyond all dreams to restore,
I from the roots of the dark thorn am hither,
And knock on the door.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

The Ghost.

Beauty

“Blue Moon,
Now I'm no longer alone,
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own.”

Lorenz Hart (1895–1943) lyricist

"Blue Moon" (1934)

Love, Heart

“You know what so funny, this strike has been going on for a long time. It's lasted longer than the Civil Rights movement, what the hell is this? It's painfully obvious to me white people don't know how to protest. You need like an Al Sharpton, have a dream, go to the mountaintop, do something!”

D. L. Hughley (1963) American actor and comedian

Commenting on the Writers Guild strike.
Appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (January 17, 2008)

People, Hell, Time

“Well, you must now imagine my friend at my age or almost there. You must picture him growing gray, tired of life and convinced that he had at last discovered the secret of peace. At this time he met, while visiting some relatives in a country house, a mere girl of twenty, who was the image, the haunting image of her whom he had hoped to marry thirty years before. It was one of those strange resemblances which extend from the color of the eyes to the 'timbre' of the voice, from the smile to the thought, from the gestures to the finest feelings of the heart. I could not, in a few disjointed phrases describe to you the strange emotions of my friend. It would take pages and pages to make you understand the tenderness, both present and at the same time retrospective, for the dead through the living; the hypnotic condition of the soul which does not know where dreams and memories end and present feeling begins; the daily commingling of the most unreal thing in the world, the phantom of a lost love, with the freshest, the most actual, the most irresistibly naïve and spontaneous thing in it, a young girl. She comes, she goes, she laughs, she sings, you go about with her in the intimacy of country life, and at her side walks one long dead. After two weeks of almost careless abandon to the dangerous delights of this inward agitation imagine my friend entering by chance one morning one of the less frequented rooms of the house, a gallery, where, among other pictures, hung a portrait of himself, painted when he was twenty-five. He approaches the portrait abstractedly. There had been a fire in the room, so that a slight moisture dimmed the glass which protected the pastel, and on this glass, because of this moisture, he sees distinctly the trace of two lips which had been placed upon the eyes of the portrait, two small delicate lips, the sight of which makes his heart beat. He leaves the gallery, questions a servant, who tells him that no one but the young woman he has in mind has been in the room that morning.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Pierre Fauchery, as quoted by the character "Jules Labarthe"
The Age for Love

Love, Life, Secret, Age

“Underneath her kiss I was so unguarded
Every bottle’s empty now and all those dreams are gone
Ah, but the song carries on … so holy”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Sweet Scarlet
Song lyrics, Catch Bull at Four (1972)

Kiss

“I haven't any strength, I haven't any character, I'm a born tool. I haven't any destiny. All I have is dreams. And now other people run them.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Orr
The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

People

“As you open up spiritually, your subtle body has a particular effulgence which attracts entities from both the divine and negative natures. You become more sensitive and aware of everything. You become more intuitive and have more experiences in the dream state. If there are messages you should receive, the impressions will always be there, even when you are asleep, and you will act on them without consciously being aware of it. If a communication is really meant for your growth, even though you may forget it or may not be able to understand its significance, it will still have an effect on your consciousness. Ultimately, both the positive and negative experiences are “quality tests” to assess your level of sincerity.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 21

Communication, Understanding, Nature, Sincerity

“I think the destiny of all men is not to sit in the rubble of their own making but to reach out for an ultimate perfection which is to be had. At the moment, it is a dream. But as of the moment we clasp hands with our neighbor, we build the first span to bridge the gap between the young and the old. At this hour, it’s a wish. But we have it within our power to make it a reality. If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Speech at Moorpark College, Moorpark, California (3 December 1968).
Other

Men, God, Thinking, Reality

“It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
We might be otherwise, we might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical.
Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek,
But in our mind? and if we were not weak,
Should we be less in deed than in desire?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: Julian and Maddalo http://www.bartleby.com/139/shel115.html (1819), l. 170

Love, Happiness, Truth, Beauty

“What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls?”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

What is Patriotism? (1908)

Love, Hope, Soul, Star

“But the dwellers in the country have little understanding of, and therefore little sympathy with, the longing for green fields which haunts the dweller in towns. The secret dream of almost every inhabitant in those dusky streets where even a fresh thought would scarcely seem to enter, is to realise an independence, and go and live in the country. Where is every holiday spent but in the country! What do the smoky geraniums, so carefully tended in many a narrow street and blind alley attest, but the inherent love of the country! To whom do the blooming and sheltered villas, which are a national feature in English landscape, belong, but to men who pass the greater part of their lives in small dim counting-houses! This love of nature is divinely given to keep alive, even in the most toiling and world-worn existence, something of the imaginative and the apart. It is a positive good quality; and one good quality has some direct, or indirect tendency to produce another.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Men, Secret, World

“Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with a peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accent of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. ’T was the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.”

J. Proctor Knott (1830–1911) American politician

Speech on the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, Jan. 27, 1871; Knott made this satirical speech, sometimes titled as Duluth! or The Untold Delights of Duluth, while serving in the United States House of Representatives; the speech lampooned Western boosterism by portraying Duluth, Minnesota, in fantastical and glowing language.

Angels, Soul, Sleep, Water

“I went to sleep with the hope that made America famous.
I had the kind of a dream that maybe they're still trying to teach in school.
Of the America that made America famous…and
Of the people who just might understand
That how together yes we can
Create a country better than
The one we have made of this land,
We have a choice to make each man
who dares to dream, reaching out his hand
A prophet or just a crazy God damn
Dreamer of a fool.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

What Made America Famous?
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

God, People, School, Hope

“I like Liz Phair, but there were these stupid women reviewers who said she's surpassing the Stones. Dream on.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

Women, Stupidity

Quotes about dreams page 26

Quotes about dreams
page 26