"If you are ever going to move beyond where you stand at that moment you have to conjure a picture in your head of where you want to go"
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Progress, Deval Patrick implies, is less a leap than an act of rehearsal. The line is a quiet rebuke to the comforting myth that change starts with grit alone. Before policy, before hustle, before the first awkward step, there has to be an internal image sturdy enough to pull you forward when the present is loud and the future is abstract.
“Conjure” is the tell. It’s not “plan” or “calculate,” words that belong to spreadsheets and bureaucratic certainty. It’s a verb of imagination, bordering on the magical, and Patrick uses it to dignify a skill politics often treats as frivolous: visualization as discipline. The subtext is that stagnation isn’t only structural; it’s also psychological. People get trapped not just by institutions, but by an inability to picture themselves on the other side of them. That’s a particularly pointed claim from a politician who rose through systems that often signal to outsiders where they do not belong.
Contextually, Patrick’s career as Massachusetts’ first Black governor and as an Obama-era Democrat is steeped in the rhetoric of possibility: persuasion aimed at voters and citizens who are tired of being told to “be realistic.” This sentence functions like campaign language without the bunting. It doesn’t promise that imagining guarantees arrival. It argues that without a destination vivid enough to name, “where you stand” becomes a life sentence. In a political culture obsessed with tactics, Patrick is insisting on a prior requirement: a picture worth moving toward.
“Conjure” is the tell. It’s not “plan” or “calculate,” words that belong to spreadsheets and bureaucratic certainty. It’s a verb of imagination, bordering on the magical, and Patrick uses it to dignify a skill politics often treats as frivolous: visualization as discipline. The subtext is that stagnation isn’t only structural; it’s also psychological. People get trapped not just by institutions, but by an inability to picture themselves on the other side of them. That’s a particularly pointed claim from a politician who rose through systems that often signal to outsiders where they do not belong.
Contextually, Patrick’s career as Massachusetts’ first Black governor and as an Obama-era Democrat is steeped in the rhetoric of possibility: persuasion aimed at voters and citizens who are tired of being told to “be realistic.” This sentence functions like campaign language without the bunting. It doesn’t promise that imagining guarantees arrival. It argues that without a destination vivid enough to name, “where you stand” becomes a life sentence. In a political culture obsessed with tactics, Patrick is insisting on a prior requirement: a picture worth moving toward.
Quote Details
| Topic | Goal Setting |
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