Quotes about dreamer
A collection of quotes on the topic of dreamer, dreams, dream, use.
Quotes about dreamer
“You are a dreamer, and that is your misfortune.”
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet
“For I have always been a seeker, a dreamer, and a ponderer on seeking and dreaming…”
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Source: Night Ocean et autres nouvelles
Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor
Acceptance speech for the 1970 Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation Award (16 January 1971), published in Elvis — Word for Word: What He Said, Exactly As He Said It (1999) by Jerry Osborne, p. 188
Context: I'd like to thank the Jaycees for electing me as one of their outstanding young men. When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed, has come true a hundred times... And these gentlemen over here, these are the type of people who care, they're dedicated, and they realize that it is possible that they might be building the kingdom of heaven, it's not just too far fetched, from reality. I'd like to say that I learned very early in life that "Without a song, the day would never end; without a song, a man ain't got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend — without a song." So I keep singing a song. Goodnight. Thank you.
“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Variant: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II
“The dreamers are the saviours of the world.”
James Allen (1864–1912) British philosophical writer
As A Man Thinketh (1902), Visions and Ideals
Context: The dreamers are the saviours of the world. As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.
Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist
As quoted in Astrophysics of the Diffuse Universe (2003) by Michael A. Dopita and Ralph S. Sutherland
Context: Humanity needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)
As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false <br class="br">1880s
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
Berkeley, CA http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly (1911) <br class="br">1910s
“I am the maker of music, the dreamer of dreams!”
Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Variant: We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
“The world is made by the singer for the dreamer.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
Source: The Critic as Artist
“Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!”
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Source: The Glass Menagerie
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts
Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer
Quoted by Barbara Leaming, "Orson Welles: The Unfulfilled Promise". The New York Times, July 14, 1985.
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall Speech (November 2014)
“I never meant to be but a dreamer.”
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
Ibid.
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Nunca pretendi ser senão um sonhador.
Jared Lee Loughner (1988) Charged with 2011 Tucson shooting
December 8, 2010, video posting — www.kgun9.com, 9OYS Investigates: Who is Jared Loughner?, KGUN9, January 8, 2011, 2011-01-10 http://www.kgun9.com/Global/story.asp?S=13809065,
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
Remarks about the first White House Science Fair in 2010. “It’s a prototype!” Tune in for President Obama’s Last Science Fair, April 13th https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxEch5nsNkk (quote from video published on April 12, 2016) <br class="br">2016
Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher
Introduction, sect. 6
La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960)
Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter
I Miss You, her character's guitar piece for Hannah Montana and in reality dedicated to her late grandfather Ron Cyrus
Song lyrics
Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter
White Horse, written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose.
Song lyrics, Fearless (2008)
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Source: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1934), p. 48
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
General Aspects of Dream Psychology (1928)
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Letter to James F. Morton (10 February 1923), published in Selected Letters Vol. I (1965), p. 208
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.
Michael Gambon (1940) British actor
Quoted in Dominic Wills, "Michael Gambon Biography" http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/michael_gambon_biog.html, tiscali.co.uk (undated)
Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet
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.
“The greatest man of action is he who is the greatest, and a life-long, dreamer.”
Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) American architect
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.
“Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams.”
Tennessee Williams Camino Real
Camino Real (1953)
Context: You said, "They're harmless dreamers and they're loved by the people." — "What," I asked you, "is harmless about a dreamer, and what," I asked you, "is harmless about the love of the people? — Revolution only needs good dreamers who remember their dreams."
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)
Context: Of the pleasures and pains of opium much has been written. The ecstasies and horrors of De Quincey and the paradis artificiels of Baudelaire are preserved and interpreted with an art which makes them immortal, and the world knows well the beauty, the terror and the mystery of those obscure realms into which the inspired dreamer is transported. But much as has been told, no man has yet dared intimate the nature of the phantasms thus unfolded to the mind, or hint at the direction of the unheard-of roads along whose ornate and exotic course the partaker of the drug is so irresistibly borne.
Joseph Campbell book The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Source: The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), Chapter 1
Context: Dream is personalized myth, myth is depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problem and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2015, Remarks at Panama Civil Society Forum (April 2015)
Context: It's the dreamers -- no matter how humble or poor or seemingly powerless -- that are able to change the course of human events. We saw it in South Africa, where citizens stood up to the scourge of apartheid. We saw it in Europe, where Poles marched in Solidarity to help bring down the Iron Curtain. In Argentina, where mothers of the disappeared spoke out against the Dirty War. It’s the story of my country, where citizens worked to abolish slavery, and establish women’s rights and workers’ rights, and rights for gays and lesbians.
“You ought to dream. All our biggest businessmen have been dreamers.”
Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises
Source: The Sun Also Rises
“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.”
Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist
The River, written by Victoria Shaw and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, Ropin' the Wind (1991)
Context: You know a dream is like a river,
Ever changin' as it flows.
And a dreamer's just a vessel
That must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what's behind you,
And never knowing what's in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores... andI will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry.
Like a bird upon the wind,
These waters are my sky.
I'll never reach my destination
If I never try.
So I will sail my vessel
'Til the river runs dry.
Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer
Source: Personal Success
“What the war did to dreamers.”
Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See
Source: All the Light We Cannot See
“Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots”
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist
Variant: He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
“Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.”
Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Variant: Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth.
“Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest…”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Aurora Leigh
Source: Aurora Leigh
“A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.”
Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker
“The madman is a dreamer awake”
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis
“The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher
“Great dreamers' dreams are never fulfilled, they are always transcended.”
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
“The blackest night must end in dawn, the light dispel the dreamer's fear.”
Anne McCaffrey (1926–2011) American-Irish novelist
Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 17, The Strange Man's Strange Tale
Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist
Source: The Dream Keeper and Other Poems
Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer
Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
“Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.”
William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer
Gaston Bachelard book The Poetics of Space
Source: La poétique de l'espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958), Ch. 1
Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer
Source: Quintana of Charyn
“Life tests the big dreamers the Passionate revolutionaries.”
Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer
“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”
Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American writer
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.”
Harriet Tubman (1820–1913) African-American abolitionist and humanitarian
“Dreams come true all the time, just not for the dreamers”
Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books
“Awake, arise, and assert yourself, you dreamers of the world. Your star is now in ascendancy.”
Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author
Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America
Liberty University commencement speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B421uhrOV-o&feature=youtu.be&t=12m34s (13 May 2017) <br class="br">2010s, 2017, May
Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist
Duke, Winter for Two, p. 212
1990s, The Notebook (1996)
Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman
Son of a Son of a Sailor
Song lyrics, Son of a Son of a Sailor (1978)
Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter
Cinnamon Girl
Song lyrics, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)
N. K. Jemisin book The Broken Kingdoms
Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 4 “Frustration” (watercolor) (p. 71)
“Are they heroes or mere dreamers?”
Gaius Valerius Flaccus (45–95) Roman poet and writer
David R. Slavitt, The Voyage of the Argo: The Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus (1999), Book I, lines 98–99 (p. 3). There is no corresponding text in the Latin (cf. Argon. 1.79–80).
Misattributed
Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter
Quote of De Vlaminck; as cited in Vlaminck, Klaus G. Perls, The Hyperion Press, New York 1941, p. 51
To support his family of four, De Vlaminck had to find other means by which to earn a living, and ended up taking several other jobs, including working as a billiards players, a writer, a general worker, and even a cyclist
Quotes undated
T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Introductory Chapter. Variant: This, therefore, is a faded dream of the time when I went down into the dust and noise of the Eastern market-place, and with my brain and muscles, with sweat and constant thinking, made others see my visions coming true. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)
“Action is what separates the do-ers from the dreamers.”
Lennox Lewis (1965) British-Canadian boxer
Lennox Lewis (From his Twitter account)
Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test
Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 76
Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist
Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 4, “Solutions in Memory” (p. 53)
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation and Empire (1952), Chapter 4 “The Emperor; in part I, “The General” originally published as “Dead Hand” in Astounding (April 1945)