“In the short term, there is scant room for dreaming, for one must choose between being taken seriously and being visionary. In the long term, however, leadership cannot afford to overlook the wisdom of dreams, even the wisdom of playful dreaming. Vision that bounds higher than the barriers that confine us often spring from earnest playfulness.”

“If we want our species to survive in the long term, human beings cannot afford to stop reaching for the stars.”

“If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's.”

“I'll take an earnest person over a hip person every time, because hip is short term. Earnest is long term.”

“The difference between wisdom and foolishness lies within our dreams. To spend all day dreaming, instead of working to reach our dreams is pointless.”

“How can one... dream of power in any other terms than in the symbols of power?”