Famous Daydreams Trivia Quiz

Answer: Rene Descartes

Many talk about visual imagery. Our ability to "see" images in our daydreams-to visualize both known and the unknown on our own is a direct link to human creativity. To get the idea of visual imagery, try this simple exercise: stop for a second and visualize exactly where you bed is in your bedroom.

Notice what you've done-you've seen the bed in the bedroom from within it as you know it, left and right, window and door, or you've seen the bedroom from the outside. You are doing this viewing without literally seeing the object.

Rene Descartes was a formidable seventeenth century mathematician, scholar, and philosopher who came to believe that the only thing provable is that we can be conscious of things. After him, countless minds have tried to understand just what consciousness is.

Answer: right brain

Roger Perry and Robert Ornstein in the 1950s and the 1960s did tests which established to them that daydreaming takes place in the right brain. Their studies helped establish that the brain needs to daydream, in order to give a period of rest to the more analytical left brain.

Psychologists and neurologists have increasingly realized that our brains actually turn on--not off--during daydreaming.

Answer: Walter Mitty

Neurologists say that we probably spend about a third of our time awake daydreaming. Given that it's such a big part of our lives, it's surprising that "it's been largely ignored by science," neuroscientist Kalina Christoff has said.
Source: Cosmos Magazine, "Daydreamers Might Solve Problems Faster," 14 May 2009

Madame Curie, discoverer of radium and other elements, wrote that during her productive times she lived in "single preoccupation as if in a dream... peace and meditation, which is the true atmosphere of the laboratory..."

Source: Eve Curie, "Madame Curie: A Biography," 1937, p. 171.

Answer: Wishbone

This show was on the air in the U.S. from 1995-2001. Interestingly, only the TV viewers and the characters in Wishbone's daydreams could hear him speak.

Wishbone is usually dressed in human clothing. He experiences or daydreams about Robin Hood, Sancho Panza, Joan of Arc.

Modern researchers speculate that daydreams are highly productive, serve to help people link up different time periods, and deepens understanding.

Answer: Mary Shelley

A Lennon biographer writes that "John took great care in crafting the lyrics . . . He sat at the piano...played until he sank into a deep, trance-like state where...missing words just came to him from 'above'. The trick was to allow the mind to go blank."

Again, there is a case of someone hovering between total consciousness and another productive 'daydreaming' state.

Source: Fred Seaman, "John Lennon, Living on Borrowed Time," 1991.
Source: Mary Shelley, Author's Introduction, "Frankenstein," 1831.

Answer: Einstein

Einstein said spoke of his kinship for Mozart who was in tune with the harmony of the universe.
Source: Walter Isaacson, "Einstein: His Life And Universe," 2007, p 14.

Increasingly, people are seeing that daydreaming is a necessary part of living. Rita Dove, US poet laureate, celebrates daydreaming. 'I want to discuss . . . an activity [daydreaming] which...is barely tolerated in adolescence,...never encouraged in school - but without which no bridges would soar, no light bulbs burn.'

Source: "The Writer's Home Companion," ed. Joan Bolker, 1997, p.155.

Answer: Mozart

Mozart wrote, "When I am... completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer - say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly."

Source: William Stafford, "The Mozart Myths: A Critical Reassessment," 1991, p. 163 ("a lively dream") and p. 162("my ideas flow best")


The writer Alfred Lord Tennyson called his times of composition "a waking trance."
Source: Arthur Waugh, "Alfred Lord Tennyson:A Study of His Life and Work," 2008.

Answer: Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison was said to be "addled" because of his excessive daydreaming in class.

Apparently, Edison infuriated his teachers because of his 'dreamy' behavior. He would doodle and drift away instead of reciting his lessons. Word has it that teachers made fun of him (and worse). One time during a reading lesson a teacher told Edison "Thomas Alva, you always ask entirely too many questions. You are addled."

Source: Sue Guthridge, "Thomas Edison: Young Inventor," 1986.

Answer: Leonardo da Vinci

Called the quintessential Renaissance man, Da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was painter, scientist, engineer, sculptor, botanist, musician, writer, anatomist, architect.

This thought of his sums up his active creativity combining powerful daydreaming and practical accomplishment: "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."

Source: Giancarlo Maiorino, "Leonardo da Vinci: The Daedalian Mythmaker," 1992.

Answer: Mark Twain

Twain writes of "The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what a luxury it becomes...how soon and...easily our dream-life and our material life become...so fused together that we can't quite tell which is which, anymore."

Source: Mark Twain, "The $30,000 Bequest"