This is my interpretation of this great quote by Sir Peter Ustinov.
When someone keeps pursuing their dreams, they keep raising the bar / stakes to achieve ever more of their dreams, to the point that they start to step onto others' dreams & start turning them into nightmares.
For instance, Steve Jobs had a dream of combining humans with beautiful & brilliant machines; to make human lives easier & more comfortable. But after achieving his first dream of making Apple 1, he raised the bar & moved on to his next dream of making Apple 2. Then, after achieving that dream, he moved on to his next dream of making Macintosh. After a few hiccups in his career, he then moved on to those colourful Macs, then iPods, iPhones, & iPads.
Reading / listening this story of a college-dropout-turned-entrepreneur is very inspiring for people around the world. But we forget how his "super abundance of dreams" turned the dreams of millions around the world into nightmares.
For example, cameras in iPhones (& then other OS based phones) destroyed the photographing film & camera businesses, like Kodak, for instance. Kodak employees were thinking of one day retiring into the sunset & seeing their kids go to colleges / universities & then be successful in their lives, but their dreams turned into nightmares, when Kodak went bankrupt.
We can take this example into any other latest tech entrepreneur's dreams & how his/her dreams created nightmares for millions of others; dreams of Travis Kalanick (Uber's CEO) & nightmares of taxi drivers, dreams of Kevin Systrom & Mike Krieger (Founders of Instagram) & nightmares of employees of photographic film & camera companies) etc.
We can also apply this quote to any one of the industries from tobacco to oil & gas to defence & military to financial services to even geopolitical affairs. Companies in all these industries, & politicians in the geopolitical arena, are trying to achieve the dreams of owners (single owner or multiple shareholders), management, employees, & politicians at all levels, at the expense of creating nightmares for millions around the world with climate change problems, wars, austerity measures, & adverse health conditions (i.e. cancers etc.).
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