Quotes about dreams (4411 quotes, page 28)

“On the day that you were born
The angels got together
And decided to create a dream come true
So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair of gold
And starlight in your eyes of blue.”

Hal David (1921–2012) American lyricist

Song (They Long to be) Close to You

Angels

“No longer dream that human prayer
The will of Fate can overbear.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book VI, p. 202

Fate

“And today many artists like myself refuse to be involved in some ideas. In painting – for me – no fooling-the-eye, no window-hole-in-the wall, no illusions, no representations, no associations, no distortions, no paint-caricaturing, no dream pictures of dripping, no delirium trimmings, no sadism or slashing, no therapy, no kicking-the-effigy, no clowning, no acrobatics, no heroics, no self-pity, no guilt.... no abstraction of everything, no nonsense, no involvements, no confusing painting with everything that is no painting.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

1940 - 1955
Source: Contemporary American Painting, University of Illinois, Urbana 1952, p. 226-227

Fools , Idea , Painting

“It's all true. It's true I didn't want to be a dancer. What I really wanted to be was a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Then at 14 I discovered girls, and began to study dancing diligently. At that time dancing was the only way you could put your arm around the girl. Dancing was courtship. Only later did I discover you dance joy. You dance love. You dance dreams. Of course, the Pittsburgh Pirates lost a hell of a shortstop.”

Gene Kelly (1912–1996) American dancer, actor, singer, director, producer and choreographer

Speaking on March 8, 1985 at the American Film Institute; as quoted in "Hollywood Honors Man Who `Danced Joy'" by Paul Rosenfield, in Los Angeles Times (March 9, 1985)

Love , Way , Girl , Hell

“Every time I open a child's head and see a brain, I marvel at the mystery: This is what makes every one of us who we are. This is what hold all our memories, all our thoughts, all our dreams. This is what makes us different from each other in millions of ways.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Take The Risk (2008), p. 234

Way , Memory , Time

“We started with pure parliamentary democracy at the Centre and in the States. Now this has been extended to the grassroots, though not in the Gandhian way, but according to the dream of Gandhiji, along that line. We have extended democracy to the grassroots, in the panchayati raj experiment and I think that has given solid support to our parliamentary system. Our parliamentary system could not have survived, without this basic grassroot support. But all these can function only in an atmosphere of social and economic progress and greater equality.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Way , Democracy , Support , Thinking

“I dream of you / And all the things you say / I wonder where you are now
I need you now / You've knocked me off my feet
We talk of going old / But you say "Please don't
Let me be the one / Who shines with you / In the morning / We don't know what to do"”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Slide Away
Definitely Maybe (1994)

“Soon after completing the 'La Combe' series [circa 1950] I had a dream in which I was assisted by many children on a scaffold, painting a huge mural made up of square panels fitted together. Each panel was being painted by a child very quickly in long black strokes with huge brushes. The work was done in seconds. Upon waking I immediately made a reminder sketch of the mural. Later I made a drawing of many ink strokes, which I cut up into twenty squares and placed at random in a four-by-five grid..”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

as quoted in "Ellsworth Kelly", John Coplands; Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1971
1969 - 1980

Children , Drawing , Painting

“Music assists you in your quest of the spark hidden within, the moment you discover your real self through music, the reason why you have been born becomes clear. This realisation ultimately helps you mould your path to achieve your dreams.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

My father's wrestling techniques made my lungs strong: Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia

Music , Help

“A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

Source: 1870s - 1880s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 5: Letter to Emile Schuffenecker, (Copenhagen, 14 January 1885)

“Swaraj, will always remain a dream unless the people are healthy and strong in mind and body. They can not be so unless mothers have the health and wisdom to look after the children properly”

Bidhan Chandra Roy (1882–1962) Former Chief Minister of West Bengal, India

In page 87
Remembering Our Leaders: Mahadeo Govind Ranade by Pravina Bhim Sain

Wisdom , Children , People , Health

“Nothing but a speck we seem
In the waste of waters round,
Floating, floating like a dream, —
Outward bound.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

"Outward Bound"; Poems Since 1860
Poems (1866)

Water

“Distant lover, ooo, sugar
How can you treat my heart so mean and cruel?
Didn't you know, sugar, that I dream
Of what I spent with you?
I treasure it like it was a precious jewel, oh baby.
Lord have mercy!”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

Distant Lover, co-written with Gwen Gordy and Sandra Greene.
Song lyrics, Let's Get It On (1973)

Lovers , Distant , Heart , Baby

“Life's visions are vanished, it's dreams are no more.
Dear friends of my bosom, why bathed in tears?
I go to my fathers; I welcome the shore,
which crowns all my hopes, or which buries my cares.
Then farewell my dear, my lov'd daughter, Adieu!
The last pang in life is in parting from you.
Two Seraphs await me, long shrouded in death;
I will bear them your love on my last parting breath.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

"A death-bed Adieu from Th. J. to M. R." Jefferson's poem to his eldest child, Martha "Patsy" Randolph, written during his last illness in 1826. http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/prespoetry/tj.html Two days before his death, Jefferson told Martha that in a certain drawer in an old pocket book she would find something intended for her. https://books.google.com/books?id=1F3fPa1LWVQC&pg=PA429&dq=%22in+a+certain+drawer+in+an+old+pocket+book%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=NDa2VJX_OYOeNtCpg8gM&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22in%20a%20certain%20drawer%20in%20an%20old%20pocket%20book%22&f=false The "two seraphs" refer to Jefferson's deceased wife and younger daughter. His wife, Martha (nicknamed "Patty"), died in 1782; his daughter Mary (nicknamed "Polly" and also "Maria," died in 1804
1820s

Love , Life , Death , Hope

“We in America – and men across the earth – have trapped ourselves with that word equality, which is inapplicable to the genus man. I wish we would forget it. Stop its use in our country: Let the communists have it. It isn’t fit for men who fling thei…r dreams across the skies. It is fit only for a leveling down of mankind.”

Lillian Smith (author) (1897–1966) American author, social critic

"Killers of the Dream" Lillian Smith

Men , Country , Forgetting

“It is the anniversary of the 'I Have a Dream' speech from Martin Luther King. And what an appropriate day. At first we picked that date, we didn't know and I thought, "oh jeez." But now I think it was almost divine providence. I do. His dream has been so corrupted. Judge a man by the content of his character. Character doesn't even matter anymore in this country. It's time we picked that dream back up and finished the job.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

on his Restoring Honor rally on 2010-08-28
2010s, 2010

Thinking , Time , Country

“Tier on tier of beautiful mountains and streams
Blue green vistas locked in white clouds
The mist makes my bandana wet
Dew coats my grass cape
My feet climb in straw sandals
My hand holds an old wooden stick
When I gaze down again on the dusty world
It has become a land of phantoms and dreams to me”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

World , Beauty , Mountain , Grass

“Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquest…”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

As quoted in Lindbergh (1998) by A. Scott Berg, p. 3

Future

“Dr. King said he had a dream that WE would get to the promised land. Well, we’re here. We just have to live it. Through hard work and service to our fellow man, we can have it. In America, there is enough to go around.”

Stacey Dash (1967) American actress

Welcome to my Blog!! http://www.patheos.com/blogs/staceydash/2015/05/hello-world/#more-1 (May 11, 2015)

“During my nightmarish time in a coma, 11 days long, you kept appearing in my dreams, wild, you and Slava, like gypsies & always too late. You were a two-man orchestra & we were always looking for you and waiting for you.”

Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) Swiss painter and sculptor

In a letter, January 1986; cited in: Jean Tinguely, ‎Margrit Hahnloser-Ingold, ‎Paul Sacher (1996) Briefe von Jean Tinguely an Paul Sacher und Gemeinsame Freunde.
Quotes, 1980's

Appearance , Time , Waiting

“But to have dreamed the dream is to have flown above the mountains so high in all but deed.”

Peter F. Hamilton Commonwealth Saga

The Agent
Commonwealth Saga, Judas Unchained (2005)

Mountain

“In dreams you are so 'dumb' that you believe there is a commerce between the living and the dead. You are so 'irrational' as to imagine that you sometimes speak to parents who are dead. You are so 'unrealistic' that it seems to you that you visit old houses, long ago torn down, or that you travel in exotic foreign cities that you have actually never visited. In dreams you are so 'insane' you do not feel yourself locked in a closet of time and space, but feel instead as if all infinity but waited your beckoning.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 758, Page 25
The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression (1979)

Travel , Feeling , Imagination , Parent

“That's why I can dream dreams that God Himself never dreamed. I'm that kind of person. I can believe the things even God can't believe. I can do things even God can't. That's why God hated me more than Satan hated me.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Father's Words in Washington D.C. http://www.unification.net/2003/20030517_1.html (2003-05-17)

God , Hate , Personality

“It will take time for this to sink in. It was my dream to one day drive a Formula One car and even if my target now has been to fight for poles and race wins, I didn’t expect it today and it feels fantastic. Doing it here in Italy is also amazing.”

Sebastian Vettel (1987) German racing driver in Formula 1

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2008/9/8379.html September 13, 2008
After his first pole.
Sourced quotes

Cars , Feeling , Time , Fight

“If you ever feel any pride or vanity on account of your sway and rule over your subjects then think of the supreme sway and rule of the Lord over the Universe, the extent of His creations, the supremacy of His Might and Glory, His Power to do things which you cannot even dream of doing and His control over you which is more dominating than that which you can ever achieve over anything around you. Such thoughts will cure your mental weakness, will keep you away from vanity and rebellion (against Allah), will reduce your arrogance and haughtiness and will take you back to the sanity which you had foolishly deserted… Try carefully to realize that a ruler can create goodwill in the minds of his subjects and can make them faithful and sincere to him only when he is kind and considerate to them, when he reduces their troubles, when he does not oppress them and when he never asks for things which are beyond their power. These are the principles which you should keep in mind and act upon.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Nahj al-Balagha, Letter 53: An order to Malik Al-Ashtar

Faith , Feeling , Thinking , Universe

“I was passing the doorman of the Biltmore, and I hated him at once, with his yellow braids and six feet of height and all that dignity, and now a black automobile drove to the curb, and a man got out. He looked rich; and then a woman got out, and she was beautiful, her fur was silver fox, and she was a song across the sidewalk and inside the swinging doors, and I thought oh boy for a little of that, just a day and a night of that, and she was a dream as I walked along, her perfume still in the set morning air.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Hate , Beauty , Boy , Night

“Her friends have become who they've become by default. Their dreams are forgotten, or were never formulated to begin with.”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

“They call it freebasing. It's not free, it costs you your house! It should be called home basing! Three signs you're addicted to cocaine: First of all, if you come home to your house and you have no furniture and your cat's going "I'm outta here, prick!," Warning! Number two: If you have this dream where you're doing cocaine in your sleep and you can't fall asleep, and you wake up and you're doing cocaine, BINGO! Number three: if on your tax form it says, "$50,000 for snacks," MAYDAY!”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

A Night at the Met (1986)

Home , Cats , Sleep , Housing

“[T]he American dream is still alive and well, thanks: Even the newest taxi driver stumbling over his English grammar knows he can truly become an American. But European Muslims can't become French or Dutch or Italian or German. Even if they qualify for a passport, they remain second-class citizens. On a good day. And they're supposed to take over the continent that's exported more death than any other?”

Ralph Peters (1952) American military officer, writer, pundit

Source: 2000s, Wars of Blood and Faith: The Conflicts That Will Shape the Twenty-First Century (2007), p. 334

Death

“By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness.... I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory.... Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)
Variant: By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness... I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory... Let “desire” be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.

Life , World , Hope , Soul

“I guess I can't, or my subconscious can't, even imagine a warless world. The best it can do is substitute one kind of war for another. You said, no killing of humans by other humans. So I dreamed up the Aliens. Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you're trying to use, not my rational mind. Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it's easier to conceive of than the motives of war. But you're handling something outside reason. You're trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn't suited to the job. Who has humanitarian dreams?”

Ursula K. Le Guin book The Lathe of Heaven

Source: The Lathe of Heaven (1971), Chapter 6 (Orr)

War , World , Imagination , Motivation

“O you recall the song ya used to sing-a-long,
Shifting the river-trade on that ol' steamer,
Life is but a dream!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), Saint Huck

Life , Singing

“We busted out of class had to get away from those fools;
We learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned in school.
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer sound;
I can feel my heart begin to pound.
You say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"No Surrender"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

School , Fools , Feeling , Learning

“If you only knew the dreams in that little boy's head all those years ago. You don't know how lucky I am. I will never retire because even if they retire me, I'll find something else to do.”

Jimmy Magee (1935–2017) Gaelic games commentatot

Magee said he hoped to die live on air. herald.ie http://www.herald.ie/news/irelands-other-big-games-winner-jimmy-magee-3196108.html
Others

Boy

“Sometimes a god comes,” Selver said. “He brings a new way to do a thing, or a new thing to be done. A new kind of singing, or a new kind of death. He brings this across the bridge between the dream-time and the world-time. When he has done this, it is done. You cannot take things that exist in the world and try to drive them back into the dream, to hold them inside the dream with walls and pretenses. That is insanity. What is, is. There is no use pretending, now, that we do not know how to kill one another.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Section 8
Hainish Cycle, The Word for World Is Forest (1972)

Death , God , World , Way

“Plato (427-347 B. C.) in his philosophical writings, stressed the inner psychological reality in contrast to the reality of the external world. He believed that the human soul consists of three parts. 1) The rational soul, which resided in the brain. 2) The anima soul, controlling emotions and passions, was located in the chest. 3) The vegetative soul, controlling physiological needs, was located in the abdomen, When dreams occurred in sleep, the irrational soul reasserted themselves.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: A History of Great Ideas in Abnormal Psychology, (1990), p. 23

World , Soul , Reality , Sleep

“As incompetent in life as in death, I loathe myself and in this loathing I dream of another life, another death. And for having sought to be a sage such as never was, I am only a madman among the mad.”

Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay

A Short History of Decay (1949)

Life , Death , Madness

“Another school opposed this dream with its summons to military adventure in Anatolia, and took its blueprint from a Western reading of classical antiquity. While conceding the demographic break with the ancient Greek world, the westernized intelligentsia claimed a continuing spiritual affinity between modem Western, secular ideals and those of classical Athens. Locating the modern Greeks through their cultural heritage of classical antiquity along an cast—west axis that stretched from Paris and London to Athens and Constantinople, the ‘Hellenic’ map differed profoundly from the ‘Byzantine’ one; for the Latter had a north—south axis from Moscow to Constantinople and Egypt, which aligned a re-nascent Byzantine Greece with Orthodox Russia as the protector of Eastern Christianity. There was a similar contrast in ethnic moralities. While the Byzantine conception of Greek revival envisaged a renewal of the Orthodox Christian virtues and ecclesiastical controls, the secular Hellenic vision advocated a ‘return’ to the qualities of rational enquiry, self-control and reflective choice which seemed to sum up the ethical message of ancient Greece.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: The Ethnic Origins of Nations (1987), p. 203.

World , School , Reading

“Blows are what awaken us and help to break the dream. They show us the insufficiency of this world and make us long to escape, to have freedom.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

World , Freedom , Help

“They are always talking about the fire of hell, but no one has ever seen it, my friends. For hell is cold. It used to be that the nights weren't long enough to wear out your malice, and you got up each morning with your breasts still full of poison. But now the devil himself has withdrawn from you. Ah, how alone we are in evil, my brothers! The poor human race dreams from century to century of breaking that solitude — but it's no use! The devil, who can do so many things, will never succeed in founding a Church, a Church that will put in common both the merits of hell and the sin of all. From now until the end of the world, the sinner will have to sin alone, always alone — for just as we die alone, so also do we sin alone. The devil, you see, is the friend who never stays with us to the end.”

Georges Bernanos book Monsieur Ouine

The curé of Fenouille to his congregation, p. 171
Monsieur Ouine, 1943

World , Hell , Solitude , Evil

“I guess the best that I can do now
is to pretend that I've done nothing wrong
and to dream about a train
that's gonna take me back where I belong”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Training

“Love's immortality so blind
Dreams that all things with it conjoined
Must share with it immortal day:
But not of this—but not of this—
The touch, the eyes, the laugh, the kiss,
Fall from it and it goes its way.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Love , Way , Kiss

“If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Thoughts For All Ages http://pbskids.org/rogers/all_ages/thoughts1.htm

Depressing , Valentine's Day , People , Sense

“The cognitive behavior of Western intellectuals faced with the accomplishments of their own society, on the one hand, and with the socialist ideal and then the socialist reality, on the other, takes one's breath away. In the midst of unparalleled social mobility in the West, they cry "caste." In a society of munificent goods and services, they cry either "poverty" or "consumerism." In a society of ever richer, more varied, more productive, more self-defined, and more satisfying lives, they cry "alienation." In a society that has liberated women, racial minorities, religious minorities, and gays and lesbians to an extent that no one could have dreamed possible just fifty years ago, they cry "oppression." In a society of boundless private charity, they cry "avarice." In a society in which hundreds of millions have been free riders upon the risk, knowledge, and capital of others, they decry the "exploitation" of the free riders. In a society that broke, on behalf of merit, the seemingly eternal chains of station by birth, they cry "injustice." In the names of fantasy worlds and mystical perfections, they have closed themselves to the Western, liberal miracle of individual rights, individual responsibility, merit, and human satisfaction. Like Marx, they put words like "liberty" in quotation marks when these refer to the West.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2000s, Can There Be an "After Socialism"? (2003)

Women , World , Behavior , Birth

“I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 11
Religio Medici (1643), Part II

Way

“How the girls could turn to ghosts before your eyes
And the very dreams that led to them are keeping them from dying
And how the grace with which she walked into your life
Will stay with you in your steps,
And pace with you a while
So long, so long.”

Chris Carrabba (1975) American musician

So Long, So Long

Life , Girl

“The armored cars of dreams contrived to let us do
so many a dangerous thing.”

Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979) American poet

Poem: Sleeping standing up
Poems, North and South (1946)

Cars

“No matter how far those dreams have taken me, I have always remembered, I’m the daughter of a small-business owner and the granddaughter of a factory worker — and proud of both.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Warren, Michigan (August 11, 2016)

Business , Daughters

“Consider your state of mind—your consciousness—before going to sleep. This is extremely important. Make a commitment to spend at least fifteen minutes spiritualizing your consciousness before going to bed. Read something spiritual, listen to spiritual discourse or music, or engage in discussion on a spiritual topic. Push aside the chaos and confusion that were a part of your day, and focus on spiritual reality. In this way, you will prepare yourself for the next six to eight hours of sleep. If you allow yourself to focus spiritually, you will provide less of an opportunity for negative elements to enter your dreams. You can then benefit most from your sleeping state.”

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. 24

Music , Way , Reality , Sleep

“Yeah, the world would swing if I were king.
Can I help it if I still dream time to time?”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

It's Good To Be King
Lyrics, Wildflowers (1994)

World , Time , Help

“It is not without effect that, even in a public speech, one directs one's attention at subjects, touching them at what Freud calls the navel- the navel of the dreams, he writes, to designate their ultimately unknown centre- which is simply, like the anatomical navel that represents it, that gap of which I have already spoken.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

The Freudian Unconscious and Ours
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

“Let the poet dream his dreams. Yet, the poet must look at the world; must enter into other men's lives; must look at the earth and the sky, must examine the dust in the street; must walk through the world and his mirror.”

William Baziotes (1912–1963) American painter

The Artist and His Mirror, W. Baziotes, in Right Angle Vol. III, no. 2, Washington DC, June 1949
1940s

Men , World

“Always the same picture, the narrow waters of Carrick Roads in Falmouth, the murky hump of Pendennis Castle lying across the starboard bow of the ship flying an admiral's flag: his flag — the knowledge of that had been quite definite, as it so often was in dreams. The squadron had been all around him, ready to weigh, or still shortening their cables. About to leave Falmouth, as he had done so many times.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

For My Country's Freedom, Cap 8 "Dreams"

Lying , Knowledge , Water , Time

“At an ink-stained desk, with his chin cupped in his hands, Titus was contemplating, as in a dream, the chalk-marks on the blackboard. They represented a sum in short division, but might as well have been some hieroglyphic message from a moonstruck prophet to his lost tribe a thousand years ago.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 4, section 2 (p. 410)

“I'm not very different from anyone else who has ever tried to accomplish something with his life. My motivation comes from my personal life, from watching what my mother and father went through when I was growing up, from what we experienced as migrant workers in California. That dream, that vision grew from my own experience with racism, with hope, with a desire to be treated fairly, and to see my people treated as human beings and not as chattel. It grew from anger and rage, emotions I felt 40 years ago when people of my color were denied the right to see a movie or eat at a restaurant in many parts of California. It grew from the frustration and humiliation I felt as a boy who couldn't understand how the growers could abuse and exploit farm workers when there were so many of us and so few of them.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

What the Future Holds (1984)

Life , People , Hope , Color

“What does it mean to be “successful”? How do you achieve your dreams?
Does it mean creating an impressive list of achievements? Does it mean gaining significant wealth, status, position, and power? Maybe it means pleasing your parents, family, and friends?
I wrote this book to address these questions and to create a road map to help you achieve your aspirations. Following this road map involves taking a series of steps and answering a set of questions, all of which require you to look inward as well as outward. It also involves developing a set of new skills and habits, some of which may be challenging and uncomfortable for you.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: What You're Really Meant To Do, 2013, p. 1; Lead paragraph

Books , Family , Question , Parent

“In following Seth's dream recall instructions, we found ourselves collecting some excellent examples of precognitive dreams. Some were clear-cut and almost exactly matched the foreseen future event. Others were partially disguised in symbolism. Still others were so interwoven with other dream material that we marked them as indicative of precognition and let it go at that. Sometimes dreams that seemed nonsense contained one clear, important image that shortly -- within a few days -- would appear in a different context entirely. In several cases, two or more future events would be condensed into one dream.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 249

Appearance , Future

“We have to provide the roads on which our dreams are paved. And these roads can’t have potholes, they can’t break down in six months. They have to be big roads because they are going to carry strong people, they are going to carry strong forces.”

Rahul Gandhi (1970) Indian politician

Wall Street Journal, WSJ http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/RahulGandhiSpeech.pdf

People , Strong

“I’ve been swimming for 25 years, and I don’t think there is one swim that I have done where someone didn’t say beforehand, ‘I don’t think it’s possible’ or ‘You’ll never make it’. If someone tells you that you can’t achieve your dream, don’t waste good time arguing. Walk away and do it.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 261
21 Yaks And A Speedo (2013)

Thinking , Time

“On the ice flow they grip,
cut, twist, break open seeds
throwing out the white salt,
revive volcanic dreams:
unable to satisfy
their diminuated lust
the allegoric flesh
learns the thrill of return.”

John Carder Bush (1944) British artist; brother of Kate Bush

The Creation Edda (1970)

Learning

“If Black people had simply accepted a status of economic and political inferiority, the mob murders would probably have subsided. But because vast numbers of ex-slaves refused to discard their dreams of progress, more than ten thousand lynchings occurred during the three decades following the war.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Women, Race and Class (1983)

War , People

“The author of the history of Mahmood Shah relates, that in the year AH 872 (AD 1468), the King saw the holy Prophet (Mahomed) in a dream, who presented before him a magnificent banquet of the most delicate viands. This dream was interpreted by the wise men as a sign that he would soon accomplish a conquest by which he would obtain great treasures, which prediction was soon after verified in the capture of Girnal….“In the year AH 873 (AD 1469), Mahmood Shah marched towards the country of Girnal, the capital of which bears the same name…“…The victorious army, without attacking the fort of Girnal, destroyed all the temples in the vicinity; and the King sending out foraging parties procured abundance of provisions for the camp…“The King, being desirous that the tenets of Islam should be propagated throughout the country of Girnal, caused a city to be built, which he called Moostufabad, for the purpose of establishing an honourable residence for the venerable personages of the Mahomedan religion, deputed to disseminate its principles; Mahmood Shah also took up his residence in that city…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Mahmûd BegDhã of Gujarat (AD 1458-1511)Girnar (Gujarat)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Men , Religion , History , Victory

“I sat day after day in my little room, waiting for inspiration to visit me, trying to invent a pseudonym that would express, in a combination of noble and striking sounds, our dream of artistic achievement, a pen name grand enough to compensate for my own feeling of insecurity and helplessness at the idea of everything my mother expected from me.”

Romain Gary book Promise at Dawn

Promise at Dawn (1960) as quoted in "Great Pretenders" by Emma Garman in Tablet (31 October 2007) http://www.tabletmag.com/arts-and-culture/books/906/great-pretenders/

Feeling , Idea , Waiting

“And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinsel windowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you've got to do one of two things… Please mister where's the door to the building? Round the block? Just round the block… one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what's the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There's nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), pp. 365-366

Life , Faith , Time

“When you enter an environment that is different from your normal sleeping environment, remember that every single dwelling has the energy of the people that frequent it. […] By chanting, meditating, or even putting up spiritual pictures for the duration of your stay, you can transform the area into a place that actually augments your spiritual consciousness. If nothing is done to spiritualize the atmosphere, it will be like walking into a room filled with poisonous fumes. The converse of this is also true: by sleeping in a spiritually surcharged atmosphere, dreams that offer spir- itual realization and assistance can be obtained.”

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. 22

People , Sleep

“I dreamed once that I was going to be hanged; but I was not at all surprised about it. Nobody was. My relations came to see me off, I thought, and to wish me "Good-by!" They all came, and were all very pleasant; but they were not in the least astonished—not one of them. Everybody appeared to regard the coming tragedy as one of the most-naturally-to-be-expected things in the world.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Dreams http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/jjdrm10.txt

World , Nature , Appearance

“I dream of a sculpture in which landscape, architecture and city are one. It might be a city like Marseille, a city steaming with heat which suddenly transmogrifies. I becomes an immense piece of sculpture, a gigantic figure, made up of white blocks and segmented by flat, horizontal terraces, arranged in a bare and motionless landscape.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

circa 1969
Quote of Wotruba in: 'Sculpture of Rotterdam', ed. Jan van Adrichem / Jelle Bouwhuis / Mariëtte Dulle, Center for the Art, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002, p. 198.

“p>Fierce and gentle,
Loud and silent,
The river doesn't understand itself.
The wave doesn't find itself, until it reaches the sea.Oh the wave passes,
And the waves to come will be the same.
Hunger for love
Is strong in the heart.Standing before the waves,
I think of you and me.
I think of the great sea
And I wonder where the waves come from.The waves must come from the wind.
And I wonder where the wind comes from,
And I wonder
When will we love each other again?The waves deep in the sea
And the waves on the sea's surface
Long for the shore of the sea.
Day and night the waves cannot sleep
As I can not sleep, even in dreams,
Because of my longing for you.When I go to the North,
Or to the South,
When I go anywhere, I think of you,
My only direction.Out in the great sea
Thousands of waves are pushing,
Which one never reachs the shore
Even miles and miles from home?Life is so long;
Years and months go by.
Like the sea, life is endless.
Clouds fly to the distant horizon.How can I become
Like the hundreds of thousands of small waves
In the great sea of love
And lap forever against your shore?”

Xuân Quỳnh (1942–1988) poet

"Sóng" (29-12-1967)

Love , Life , Hunger , Home

“Human paint, produce films and videos; they dance, dream and make music; they engage in political action, exchange goods, perform rituals, build houses start wars, act in plays, try to please patrons- and so on… They contain patterns, press the practitioners to "conform" and in this way mold their thought, their perception, their actions, and their discriminative abilities.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

pg 28.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

War , Music , Way , Dance

“If you have a dream, a passion and have the opportunity to make it happen, great. BUT, if you can’t get to it right away, which is quite often the case, give the job you’re doing 100 per cent and keep your eyes open. You never know what opportunity might arise … something you never thought of could become your life’s work. Success of any kind is the result of hard work … there’s no shortcut.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On success
Mount Saint Vincent University speech (2016)

Life , Passion , Success

“Democratic man, dreaming eternally of Utopias, is ever a prey to shibboleths.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)

“I had a dream where the car is reduced to a fossil
I had a dream where the car is reduced to a fossil
Take a packet of seeds, take yourself out to play
I want to see a river of orchids where we had a motorway”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"River of Orchids.
Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999)

Cars

“Sound is all our dreams of music. Noise is music's dreams of us.”

Morton Feldman (1926–1987) American avant-garde composer

Sound Noise Varese Boulez, in Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music http://books.google.pl/books?id=FgDgCOSHPysC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA15&focus=viewport, edited by Christoph Cox, Daniel Warner. A&C Black, 2004. p. 16 http://books.google.pl/books?id=FgDgCOSHPysC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA15&focus=viewport.

Music

“The most extraordinary dream I ever had was one in which I fancied that, as I was going into a theater, the cloak-room attendant stopped me in the lobby and insisted on my leaving my legs behind me.”

Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) English humorist

Dreams http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/jjdrm10.txt

“I dream of you too, Mariam jo. I miss you. I miss the sound of your voice, your laughter. I miss reading to you, and all the times we fished together. Do you remember all the times we fished together? You were a good daughter, Mariam jo, and I cannot ever think of you without feeling shame and regret. -Jalil's letter”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)

Feeling , Thinking , Fish , Laughter

“Some people think that evolutionary psychology claims to have discovered that human nature is selfish and wicked. But they are flattering the researchers and anyone who would claim to have discovered the opposite. No one needs a scientist to measure whether humans are prone to knavery. The question has been answered in the history books, the newspapers, the ethnographic record, and the letters to Ann Landers. But people treat it like an open question, as if someday science might discover that it's all a bad dream and we will wake up to find that it is human nature to love one another.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

2009 ed., p. 517
How the Mind Works (1997)

Love , People , Books , History

“He wondered if she would dream about a man who never left her, about some unemployed agoraphobic Indian warrior who liked to wash dishes.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Ten Little Indians (2003)

“I'm sure that there are many Israelis who dream of waking up one day to find the Palestinians gone. And there are many Palestinians who dream of going to bed at night and waking up the next morning to find the Israelis gone.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

SPIEGEL Interview with Daniel Barenboim

Night

“I tried to pass for nothing
But my dreams gave me away”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

If The Brakeman turns my way
Cassadaga (2007)

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life , Money , God , Pleasure

“Women fell into that category of fantasies and dreams that worked well when unfulfilled but presented all kinds of problems when brought out into the real world of trial and failure.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 10 “Paama Among the Sisters, and Alton the Poet Finds His Muse” (p. 82)

Women , World , Failure , Problem

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Death , Men , Color , Jerk

“The people of Vietnam, north and south, seek the same things, the shared needs of man, the needs for food and shelter and education—the chance to build and work and till the soil, free from the arbitrary horrors of battle, the desire to walk in the dignity of those who master their own destiny. For many painful years, in war and revolution and infrequent peace, they have struggled to fulfill those needs. It is a crime against mankind that so much courage, and so much will, and so many dreams, must be flung on the fires of war and death. To all of those caught up in this conflict we therefore say again tonight, 'Let us choose peace, and with it the wondrous works of peace, and beyond that, the time when hope reaches toward consummation, and life is the servant of life'. In this work, we plan to discharge our duty to the people whom we serve. This is the State of the Union. But over it all—wealth, and promise, and expectation—lies our troubling awareness of American men at war tonight.”

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

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Death , Men , Pain

“The glow has gone forever
And our dreams have turned to dust;
I don't know how I can go on,
And yet I know I must.”

Tom Springfield (1934) English musician, songwriter and record producer

Song No Sad Songs for Me.

“People must have both their dreams and their dinners in this world, and when we go out of it we must take what we find. That is all.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Niafer, in Book Ten : At Manuel's Tomb, Ch. LXIX : Economics of Jurgen
The Silver Stallion (1926)

People , World

“Every relationship starts out with a dream of what you think it's going to be, and you either have the tool kit when you get to the hard spots where you'll make it through, or you need to move on.”

Susan Sarandon (1946) American actress

As quoted in "Susan Sarandon On 'Jeff Who Lives At Home'" in The Daily Beast (16 March 2012) http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/16/susan-sarandon-on-jeff-who-lives-at-home-limbaugh-the-gop-tim-robbins-and-more
Quote

Thinking

“Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

Hope , Past , Future

“With Americans worried about losing their jobs, their savings, their homes and their chance at the American Dream, the New Direction Congress will work in a bipartisan way to lift our economy and help America's middle class.”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

[Pelosi Statement on Fiscally Responsible Recovery Package to Lift Economy and Help the Middle Class, October 15, 2008, http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=112&sid=e9e82631-01bc-425d-b19f-38189788ba53%40sessionmgr107&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWh, 2008-11-08]
2000s

Way , Home , Chance , Help

“If you can't sleep, I'll be there in your dreams. I'll be there in your dreams if you can't sleep at all.
And in your dreams, I'll touch your cheek
And lay my head on your shoulder.
Goodbye shadows”

Zooey Deschanel (1980) American actress, musician, and singer-songwriter

"If You Can't Sleep".
Volume Two (2010)

Sleep

“Fame, whose sweet voice whispers of phantom bliss
to you proud mortals, and who seems so fair,
is a mere echo, dream, dream lost in shade,
at every wind-puff scattered and unmade.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

La fama che invaghisce a un dolce suono
Voi superbi mortali, e par si bella,
E un'ecco, un sogno, anzi del sogno un'ombra,
Ch'ad ogni vento si dilegua e sgombra.
Canto XIV, stanza 63 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“Most fiction writers uses dreams decoratively without relating them to daily life, but the contemporary writer is becoming more expert at detecting the influence of one upon the other.”

Anaïs Nin book The Novel of the Future

The Novel of the Future (1969)

Life

“To all the young women here tonight, and all across the country, let me say those words again: Black girls rock! We rock! We rock! No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, you are beautiful, you are powerful, you are brilliant, you are funny! Let me tell you, I'm so proud of you. My husband, your president, is so proud of you. And we have such big hopes and dreams for every single one of you.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

Speech at BET's 2015 Black Girls Rock! event (28 March 2015) http://uk.eonline.com/news/640752/michelle-obama-offers-inspirational-words-at-2015-black-girls-rock-find-out-what-she-said
2010s

Women , Beauty , Hope , Girl

“I shook myself; I was dreaming. As I went to bed the words of the eighth-grade class’s teacher, when the class got to Evangeline, kept echoing in my ears: “We’re coming to a long poem now, boys and girls. Now don’t be babies and start counting the pages.” I lay there like a baby, counting the pages over and over, counting the pages.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, p. 42; conclusion
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Girl , Boy , Teachers , Baby

“Tracking the individual learning curves of the major technologies that comprise the infrastructure of information technology provides a more detailed account of the present and future state-of-the art of the technologies underlying convergence. The base technologies of digital electronics, general-purpose computer architectures, software and interaction are mature and provide solid foundations for computer science. The upper technologies of knowledge representation and acquisition, autonomy and sociality, support product innovation and provide the beginnings of foundations for knowledge science. Well's dream of a world brain making available all of human knowledge is well on its way to realization and it is in the representation, acquisition, and access and effective application of that knowledge that the commercial potential and socio-economic impact of convergence lies.”

Brian R. Gaines (1938) British computer scientist

Last paragraph
Convergence to the Information Highway (1996)

World , Art , Way , Support

“Thou wilt draw nigh!
Father — it is no dream that Thou art near —
No dream that, in my sin and misery,
I may look up to Thee,—
May hide beneath the shadow of Thy wings,
From all the restlessness of outward things,
And from my own heart's self-accusing fears —
For Thou art nigh.”

Hetty Bowman (1838–1872)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 432.

Fear , Art , Heart , Drawing

“The grass so little has to do,—
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain,

And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything;

And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine,-
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing.

And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine.

And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away,—
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were a hay!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Nature, p. 112
Collected Poems (1993)

Sleep , Grass , Bee , Night

“Paul, there is something very slack about a future that will take a biting satire for a vapid dream.”

R. A. Lafferty book Past Master

The character of Thomas More on the future reception of his Utopia, in Ch. 2
Past Master (1968)

Future

“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

Eric Hoffer book The True Believer

Section 5, Ch. 2: The Desire For Substitutes
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements

Lie , Youth , Hope

“If (Mainland) China's dream is a dream of democracy, Taiwan will provide all needed assistance in the process of realizing that dream.”

Tsai Ing-wen (1956) President of the Republic of China

Liu Xiaobo's dream should be China's dream: Taiwan's Tsai, Focus Taiwan, 1, July 13, 2017, 14 July 2017 http://focustaiwan.tw/news/acs/201707130028.aspx,

Democracy

“I am lovely, O mortals, like a dream of stone;
And my breast, where everyone is bruised in his turn,
Has been made to awaken in poets a love
That is eternal and as silent as matter.I am throned in blue sky like a sphinx unbeknown;
My heart of snow is wed to the whiteness of swans;
I detest any movement displacing still lines,
And never do I weep and never laugh.”

Charles Baudelaire book Les Fleurs du mal

<p>Je suis belle, ô mortels! comme un rêve de pierre,
Et mon sein, où chacun s’est meurtri tour à tour,
Est fait pour inspirer au poète un amour
Eternel et muet ainsi que la matière.</p><p>Je trône dans l’azur comme un sphinx incompris;
J’unis un cœur de neige à la blancheur des cygnes;
Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes,
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.</p>
"La Beauté" [Beauty] http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Beaut%C3%A9_%28Les_Fleurs_du_mal%29
Les fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil) (1857)

Love , Wedding , Heart

Quotes about dreams page 28

Quotes about dreams
page 28