“We could change things back. If we believed. If we dreamed.”

From: The Sandman, specifically from A Dream of a Thousand Cats

Genre: Comics

Who said it?: A Siamese Cat

The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the highly acclaimed graphic novel series, The Sandman, by Neil Gaiman. The Sandman is a non-conventional “comic book” series and focuses on Morpheus, the personification of dreams and stories. He is also not really a hero and he is sometimes not even the main character in his own series. However, most of the stories do have him interact with the story in some way.

The quote comes from one of the series’ short stories, A Dream of a Thousand Cats. In the tale, a cat is listening to a Siamese cat with a rather radical belief that cats used to rule the world and humans were the pets instead of the other way around. The Siamese cat came to this realization because Morpheus (looking like a black cat) came to her in a dream and showed the cat this reality. This reality was destroyed because enough humans believed in a vision where humans ruled. Enough humans eventually believed it and that dream became a reality. The Siamese cat then tells the other cat the quote, stating that things can be changed.

 

Geek wisdom: We sometimes feel helpless with the way the world currently is but we refuse to believe that anything we do will change anything. This isn’t true and the only thing that’s stopping us from changing the world for the better is the thought that anything we do won’t matter. But, if enough people actually get together and believe and dream for a better future, then the world will have not choice but to change.