Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. - Anais Nin
Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together. - Eugene Ionesco
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Rock n' roll is dream soup, what's your brand? - Patti Smith
The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time. - Abraham Lincoln
There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there. - Albert Einstein
Kekulé - Dreams of Molecules & Benzene Structure
http://www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm#abraham_lincoln_dreamFriedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz is a remarkable figure in the history of chemistry, specifically organic chemistry.
Twice Kekulé had dreams that led to major discoveries!
Kekulé discovered the tetravalent nature of carbon, the formation of chemical/ organic "Structure Theory", but he did not make this breakthrough by experimentation alone. He had a dream! As he described in a speech given at the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (German Chemical Society):
"I fell into a reverie, and lo, the atoms were gamboling before my eyes! Whenever, hitherto, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had always been in motion; but up to that time, I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced the two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller; whilst the whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them, but only at the ends of the chain. . . The cry of the conductor: “Clapham Road,” awakened me from my dreaming; but I spent part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream forms. This was the origin of the Structural Theory."
Later, he had a dream that helped him discover that the Benzene molecule, unlike other known organic compounds, had a circular structure rather than a linear one... solving a problem that had been confounding chemists:
"...I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis."
The snake seizing it's own tail gave Kekulé the circular structure idea he needed to solve the Benzene problem!
Said an excited Kekulé to his colleagues, “Let us learn to dream!”
Source: From Serendipity, Accidental Discoveries in Science, by R.M. Roberts, as used by
http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/chemistry/institutes/1992/Kekule.htmlThe distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. - Albert Einstein
Abraham Lincoln Dreamt of His Assassination
http://www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm#abraham_lincoln_dreamPresident Abraham Lincoln recounted the following dream to his wife just a few days prior to his assassination:
"About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary.
I soon began to dream.
There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?
I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.
'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers "The President" was his answer; "he was killed by an assassin!" Then came a loud burst of grief form the crowd, which awoke me from my dream."
Lincoln ascribed powerful meanings to his dreams. One of his recurring dreams in particular he considered foretelling and a sign of major events soon to occur. He had this dream the night before his assassination. On the morning of that lamentable day, President Lincoln was discussing matters of the war with General Grant during a cabinet meeting and believed that big news from General Sherman on the front would soon arrive. When Grant asked why he thought so, Lincoln responded:
"I had a dream last night; and ever since this war began I have had the same dream just before every event of great national importance. It portends some important event that will happen very soon."
One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams. - E. V. Lucas
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. - Henry David Thoreau
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. - Eleanor Roosevelt
The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold. - Kahlil Gibran
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? - Robert Kennedy
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. - Carl Jung
I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dreaming True
Harriet Tubman dreamt her way to freedom for herself and hundreds of others
http://www.mossdreams.com/tubman%20excerpt.htmBy Robert Moss
Excerpted from "Dreaming True" by Robert Moss, (Pocket Books, a Division of Simon and Schuster, Inc.
Harriet Tubman woke up with more than a jolt to the gift of dreaming true. She was a black girl, known as Minty, on a slave plantation in Tidewater, Maryland. She may have been 11 years old in 1831 when the gift hit her like a cannonball.
An angry overseer, going after a black man who was running away, grabbed a two-pound metal weight and hurled it after the man. It struck Minty full in the forehead, opening a crater through which blood poured out. Somehow she survived, with a huge dent in her forehead that marked this tiny but stocky and powerfully muscled woman more clearly than any slave brand.
Marked though she was, she succeeded not only in escaping her own slave master but in returning to Maryland from the North again and again to help other slaves make their escape. Harriet started by bringing out family members in small, careful groups. As the situation in the South grew more desperate and the Civil War loomed, she became bolder, bringing out larger parties of complete strangers.
Traveling without maps or compass, she found her way from the Maryland shore to Pennsylvania and New York and later--when the Fugitive Slave Law made it necessary to seek safety beyond U.S. territory--all the way to Canada. She conducted more than 300 slaves to freedom, never losing a single "package." On the Underground Railroad, they called her "Moses," the one who gets you to the Promised Land.
By her own account, Harriet Tubman's astonishing achievement was the gift of her dreams. She had been a dreamer before, but that terrible bump on the head kicked her experience of dreaming to a new level of clarity and power. She would experience an urgent need to go to sleep for an hour or two. If she failed to obey this urge at once, she might fall where she stood. It could happen at any time--when she was tilling the field, holding the master's baby, or later when she was exposed and vulnerable, leading a group of frightened runaways along a back road. But she did not simply "black out." She dreamed, and the dreams gave her specific guidance and directions.
<snip>
Harriet dreamed that President Lincoln freed the slaves three years before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. She was staying in the home of a New York minister at the time. She came down to breakfast in high excitement, singing "My people are free! My people are free!" Her host, the Reverend Henry Garnet, tried to calm her, cautioning her that emancipation would never come in their lifetimes. Harriet trusted her dream. "I tell you sir, you'll see it, and you'll see it soon."
When Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Harriet declined an invitation from her abolitionist friends to join a grand celebration, telling them, "I had my jubilee three years ago. I can't rejoice no more."
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. - Albert Einstein
Paul McCartney Finds "Yesterday" In a Dream
Paul McCartney is one of the most famous singer/ songwriters of all time. According to the Guinness Book of Records, his Beatles song "Yesterday" (1965) has the most cover versions of any song ever written and, according to record label BMI, was performed over seven million times in the 20th century.
The tune for "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney in a dream...
The Beatles were in London in 1965 filming Help! and McCartney was staying in a small attic room of his family's house on Wimpole Street. One morning, in a dream he heard a classical string ensemble playing, and, as McCartney tells it:
"I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!"
When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep. - Patti Smith
I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. - Andre Breton
My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth. - Abraham Lincoln
Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other. - Sojourner Truth
When the solution is simple, God is answering. - Albert Einstein
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