“We must hold fast to the dream that reason will prevail.”

— Bernard Lown

Though sometimes quoted as if he were author of it, the expression "Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible" is one that greatly predates Lown's use of it; it has also been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Jesus and Mrs. Charles E. Cowman, but the earliest published expression yet located seems to have been one by American Baptist minister Rev. Robert Stuart MacArthur in Royal Messages of Cheer and Comfort Beautifully Told (1909) edited by Sarah Conger Robinson, p. 58
A Prescription for Hope (1985)
Context: We must hold fast to the dream that reason will prevail. The world today is full of anguish and dread. As great as is the danger, still greater is the opportunity. If science and technology have catapulted us to the brink of extinction, the same ingenuity has brought humankind to the boundary of an age of abundance.
Never before was it possible to feed all the hungry. Never before was it possible to shelter all the homeless. Never before was it possible to teach all the illiterates. Never before were we able to heal so many afflictions. For the first time science and medicine can diminish drudgery and pain.
Only those who see the invisible can do the impossible. But in order to do the impossible, in the words of Jonathan Schell, we ask "not for our personal survival: we ask only that we be survived. We ask for assurance that when we die as individuals, as we know we must, mankind will live on".

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We must hold fast to the dream that reason will prevail." by Bernard Lown?

Bernard Lown 23

American cardiologist developer of the DC defibrillator and… 1921–2021

Related quotes

“Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that can not fly.

Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.”

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

Source: The Collected Poems

“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That can not fly. Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow. ”

Хью Лэнгтон (1902–1967)

“Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.”

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

"Dreams," from the anthology Golden Slippers: An Anthology of Negro Poetry for Young Readers, ed. Arna Bontemps (1941)

“If we take science as our sole guide, if we accept and hold fast that alone which is verifiable, the old theology, with all its miraculous machinery, must go.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. III: Science and Theology

“They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face.”

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

Letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (19 July 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, p. 244
1820s

“The measure of a man's estimate of your strength is the kind of weapons he feels that he must use in order to hold you fast in a prescribed place.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

Explaining Jim Crow laws to his daughters, in The Luminous Darkness : A Personal Interpretation of the Anatomy of Segregation and the Ground of Hope (1989), p. 71