Education (1902)
Context: He who knows naught of dreaming can, likewise, never attain the heights of power and possibility in persuading the mind to act.
He who dreams not creates not.
For vapor must arise in the air before the rain can fall.
The greatest man of action is he who is the greatest, and a life-long, dreamer. For in him the dreamer is fortified against destruction by a far-seeing eye, a virile mind, a strong will, a robust courage.
And so has perished the kindly dreamer — on the cross or in the garret.
A democracy should not let its dreamers perish. They are its life, its guaranty against decay.
Thus would I expand the sympathies of youth.
Thus would I liberate and discipline all the constructive faculties of the mind and encourage true insight, true expression, real individuality.
Thus would I concentrate the powers of will.
Thus would I shape character.
Thus would I make good citizens.
And thus would I lay the foundations for a generation of real architects — real, because true, men, and dreamers in action.
Ibid., p. 110
The Book of Disquiet
Original: A superioridade do sonhador consiste em que sonhar é muito mais prático que viver, e em que o sonhador extrai da vida um prazer muito mais vasto e muito mais variado do que o homem de acção. Em melhores e mais directas palavras, o sonhador é que é o homem de acção.
Berkeley, CA http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (1911)
1910s
“That Action is best, which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers”
An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) Treatise II, Section 3
Context: That Action is best, which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions Misery.
L'homme qui peut empreindre perpétuellement la pensée dans le fait est un homme de génie; mais l'homme qui a le plus de génie ne le déploie pas à tous les instants, il ressemblerait trop à Dieu.
Source: A Daughter of Eve (1839), Ch. 3: The Story of a Happy Woman.
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
“He is at no end of his actions blest
Whose ends will make him greatest, and not best.”
Act V, scene i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608)
“The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he…”
[Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, Putney Debates 1647] This is one Liberal Text. And it is more distinctive than may at first appear. It asserts the individual and the value of any individual - even the poorest He. But it asserts it without envy. It does not demand that the rich be made poor - nor even claim that the poor are more deserving than the rich. It demands equality in one thing only, the right to live one's own life.
The Liberal Future (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 12.
As quoted in Nobel, Dynamite and Peace (1929) by Ragnar Sohlman and Henrik Schück, as translated by Brian Lunn and Beatrix Lunn, p. 249; also quoted by Lester B. Pearson in his address on accepting the Nobel Peace Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway (10 December 1957) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1957/pearson-acceptance.html.
