“We are not dead but asleep, dreaming of ourselves.”
Source: The Pale King
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David Foster Wallace 185
American fiction writer and essayist 1962–2008Related quotes
Attributed from posthumous publications
Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 18
“You got some big dreams, baby, but in order to dream you gotta still be asleep.”
Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), When You Gonna Wake Up
“When I am asleep, I dream what I dream when I am awake. It's a continuous dream.”
Durmiendo sueño lo que despierto sueño. Y mi soñar es continuo.
Voces (1943)
“And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old.”
Fragment 88
Numbered fragments
“It’s called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”
Life Is Worth Losing (2005)
Context: They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago. They don’t want that. You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your fuckin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later 'cause they own this fuckin' place. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club.... The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice.... And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes every day, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it.
“The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep.”
1960s, First Inaugural Address (1969)
“Life is only a dream and we are the imagination of ourselves.”