“Look closely at the present you are constructing:
it should look like the future you are dreaming.”
Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist
Message to the Tricontinental (1967)
“Look closely at the present you are constructing:
it should look like the future you are dreaming.”
Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
As quoted in The Fresno Bee (10 October 1965)
1960s
Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda
As quoted in The Looming Tower, by Wright, p. 187, 8 August 2006.
Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China
Reported in Christian Crusade Weekly (March 3, 1974) as having been said be Zhou to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1965; reported as a likely misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 133.
Disputed
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)
“When I look at the future, it's so bright it burns my eyes!”
Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
“How many realms since Troy have been o'erthrown?
How many nations captive led? How oft
Has Fortune up and down throughout the world
Changed slavery for dominion?”
Quot post excidium Trojae sunt eruta regna?
Quot capti populi? quoties Fortuna per orbem
Servitium imperiumque tulit, varieque revertit?
Book I, line 506, as reported in Dictionary of Quotations (classical) (1897) by T. B. Harbottle, p. 248.
Astronomica