Dream on...

Toni Morrison - Sarah Lawrence College speech, 1988.

I want to talk about the activity you are always warned against as being wasteful, impractical, hopeless.

I want to talk about dreaming...

Well, now you may be asking yourselves - what is all this?

I can't save the world. What about my life, you ask? I didn't come here for this. I didn't even ask to come here.

I didn't ask to be born. You insisted on your life. That's why you are here. There is no other reason.

It's too easy not to have been born. And now that you're here - you have to do something.

Something you respect - don't you? Your parents may have wanted you. But they did not dream you up.

You did that. I'm just urging you to continue the dream you started. Because dreaming is not irresponsible.

It's first order - human business. It's not entertainment, you know. It's work.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "I have a dream," he wasn't playing. He was serious.

When he imagined it, envisioned it, created it in his own mind - it began.

Now - we have to dream too. And give it the heft and stretch and longevity it deserves.

You're not helpless. And you're not heartless. And you have time.

♥