A DSD Highlight……Apparently Robert Kennedy or his speechwriters (according to Wikiquote) were paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw’s play Back to Methuselah (1921):
Misattributed
There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Variant: “Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were
and say why not?”
Though Kennedy stated that he was quoting George Bernard Shaw when he said this, he is often thought to have originated the expression, which actually paraphrases a line delivered by the Serpent in Shaw’s play Back To Methuselah : “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”.
Robert’s brother Edward famously quoted it (paraphrasing it even further), to conclude his eulogy to his late brother after his assassination (8 June 1968): Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not? – (Eulogy in CBS news video)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_F._Kennedy#Misattributed
The quotation comes from RFK’s speech, largely about the war in Vietnam, at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968 (two days after he’d announced his candidacy and a week after LBJ’s slate lost the New Hampshire primary to Eugene McCarthy’s slate) at: