“How far do we owe loyalty to our creators’ dream? When have we earned the right to dream for ourselves?”
Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 24 (p. 442)
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David Brin 123
novelist, short story writer 1950Related quotes

Source: The Butterfly as Companion: Meditations on the First Three Chapters of the Chuang-Tzu
Context: How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.

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Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]
Inspirations : Meditations from The Artist's Way (2001), "Invocation"

“When we travel we find how greatly our boyhood dreams are outstripped by reality.”
Captain Roadstrum, about the planet Lotophage, Ch. 1
Space Chantey (1968)

Selected Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke (1960)
Rilke's Letters
Context: What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

The Dream of Home.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“In our dreams we can have our eggs cooked exactly how we want them, but we can't eat them.”