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Success Quote by Harry Chapin

"Good dreams don't come cheap, you've got to pay for them and if you just dream when you're asleep this is no way for them to come alive... to survive"

About this Quote

Chapin treats aspiration like rent: overdue, non-negotiable, and embarrassingly easy to pretend you’ve already paid. “Good dreams don’t come cheap” flips the feel-good mythology of dreaming into a ledger. The line isn’t anti-hope; it’s anti-fantasy. A “good” dream, in his framing, is one with teeth and consequence, the kind that demands time, discomfort, reputation, maybe money - the stuff people love to call “sacrifice” once it’s safely in the past.

The subtext is a warning about the gentler form of self-betrayal: letting imagination become a sedative. “If you just dream when you’re asleep” is a jab at private longing that never risks daylight. Sleep-dreams are safe; they cost nothing and threaten no routines. Chapin’s point is that costless dreams are also powerless. They don’t “come alive” because nothing has been given to them: no hours, no awkward first attempts, no failed conversations, no stubborn repetitions.

That final cluster - “come alive... to survive” - matters. He’s not only talking about achieving a goal; he’s talking about keeping it from dying under the weight of daily life. Chapin came up in a 1970s singer-songwriter culture that prized storytelling with a conscience, and his work often circled the gap between what people want and what they settle for. This lyric weaponizes plain speech to make ambition feel tactile: if you want the dream to breathe, you have to feed it.

Quote Details

TopicMotivational
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Chapin, Harry. (2026, February 16). Good dreams don't come cheap, you've got to pay for them and if you just dream when you're asleep this is no way for them to come alive... to survive. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/good-dreams-dont-come-cheap-youve-got-to-pay-for-125910/

Chicago Style
Chapin, Harry. "Good dreams don't come cheap, you've got to pay for them and if you just dream when you're asleep this is no way for them to come alive... to survive." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/good-dreams-dont-come-cheap-youve-got-to-pay-for-125910/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Good dreams don't come cheap, you've got to pay for them and if you just dream when you're asleep this is no way for them to come alive... to survive." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/good-dreams-dont-come-cheap-youve-got-to-pay-for-125910/. Accessed 21 Feb. 2026.

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Good Dreams Dont Come Cheap - Harry Chapin
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About the Author

Harry Chapin

Harry Chapin (December 7, 1942 - July 16, 1981) was a Musician from USA.

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