Choosing Tomorrow’s Dreams Over Yesterday’s Histories
Created at: September 1, 2025
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. — Thomas Jefferson
From Correspondence to Creed
Jefferson’s line comes from a letter to John Adams (1 August 1816), written in retirement as the revolutionary generation weighed what they had done—and what remained. In admitting he preferred dreams of the future to the past’s history, Jefferson distilled an Enlightenment confidence that imagination could be more useful than nostalgia. The past, to him, was instructive but not sovereign. Thus, the statement functions less as a dismissal of memory than as a governing orientation. In an era marked by the Revolution and the War of 1812, his gaze forward suggested that the measure of a republic was not its anniversaries but its capacity to envision—and then build—novel institutions and broader freedoms.
Enlightenment Optimism in Practice
Crucially, Jefferson acted on this outlook. He championed the Louisiana Purchase (1803), then commissioned the Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–1806), betting on an unknown geography because the promise outweighed the precedent. Later, he founded the University of Virginia (chartered 1819), organizing a secular curriculum to prepare citizens for a future not yet written. Even his "Notes on the State of Virginia" (1785) reads as a planning document as much as a survey, probing resources, education, and civil liberty. In this light, Jefferson’s preference for dreams becomes a policy habit: use the past as a library, but treat the future as the workshop. The sequence—imagine, then institution-build—became his method.
A Tradition of Forward Imagination
Jefferson’s stance aligns with a broader lineage of constructive futurity. Condorcet’s "Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind" (1795) argued that reason could extend human welfare indefinitely, while Francis Bacon’s "New Atlantis" (1627) staged a research society as a blueprint for progress. Much later, Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" (1963) showed how moral imagination can mobilize political change by projecting a world worth marching toward. Across centuries, these visions do not erase history; they repurpose it as scaffolding. By narrating what could be, they create a magnet that pulls present action forward.
What Psychology Says About Dreaming Ahead
Modern research suggests Jefferson’s intuition was pragmatic. Prospection—the mind’s capacity to simulate futures—guides choice, as argued in Seligman and colleagues’ "Homo Prospectus" (2016). Optimism bias, documented by Tali Sharot (2011), can spur effort and resilience, especially when paired with feedback. Likewise, goal-setting theory shows that clear, challenging aims elevate performance (Locke & Latham, 1990). However, the most effective dreaming is disciplined: concrete pathways, timetables, and revision loops translate vision into traction. In other words, audacity gains power when yoked to iterative planning.
Why History Still Matters
Yet Jefferson’s preference requires a counterweight. History remains a brake against naiveté and a reservoir of tested patterns. Thucydides called his inquiry “a possession for all time” (c. 400 BC), warning that human dynamics repeat. Similarly, Santayana’s aphorism—those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it (1905)—is less cliché than operating principle. E. H. Carr’s "What Is History?" (1961) reminds us that we continually interrogate the past to orient the present. Therefore, history is not a rival to dreaming but its quality control. It tells us which roads collapsed—and why—so that future routes can be engineered better.
The Art of Balancing Memory and Imagination
In practice, societies flourish when memory calibrates ambition. After World War II, the Marshall Plan (1948) consciously avoided the punitive logic criticized by Keynes in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" (1919), channeling aid to prevent the failures that followed World War I. Likewise, the Apollo program framed space as a new frontier while institutionalizing rigorous testing—dreaming boldly, but measuring relentlessly. Thus the path forward mirrors Jefferson’s posture: learn precisely, then leap prudently. When we let history inform the blueprint and dreams set the target, the future becomes not merely preferable—but attainable.