Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of

“Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden, we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.” – Werner Herzog

In these haunting and luminous words, Werner Herzog, the great poet of cinema, speaks to the miraculous power of human creation. His declaration is not merely about the wonder of technology, but about the eternal hunger of the human spirit — the will to resurrect the impossible, to give form to what no longer exists, to dream with our hands. When he says that we can “create dinosaurs” and “show them on the screen,” he is not marveling at spectacle alone, but at the revelation that through art and invention, mankind has become a creator of visions, a weaver of time itself. What was dead may live again; what was imagined may take shape before our eyes.

The origin of this quote arises from Herzog’s reflections on cinema and its relationship with imagination. A filmmaker of the wild and the sublime, Herzog has always seen film not as mere entertainment, but as an instrument of revelation. To him, technology — from the camera to the computer — is not cold machinery; it is an extension of the dreaming mind. He has witnessed the birth of digital art and special effects, tools that can now recreate the grandeur of lost worlds and summon extinct creatures to life. Yet Herzog’s awe is not naive. He recognizes that these tools are dangerous as well as divine — for in their power to conjure illusion, they may blind us to truth. And yet, he insists, they hold the same sacred quality as dreams, the very fountain from which art and myth have always sprung.

From the dawn of civilization, humankind has sought to overcome the limits of the real. The cave paintings of Lascaux, drawn thirty thousand years ago, were themselves acts of resurrection — visions of prehistoric beasts born again in pigment and firelight. Those ancient artists, crouched in flickering caves, were the first animators, breathing motion into stone. Herzog, who once filmed those same caves in his documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams, saw in their lines the beginning of the human imagination — the first attempt to say, “I remember. I dream. I create.” Thus, his words about dinosaurs are not simply about cinema; they are an echo of that primeval instinct: the will to make the invisible visible.

Yet Herzog’s phrase — “a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are” — carries a deeper paradox. For technology, like dream, is double-edged. It can elevate or ensnare. Dreams can inspire art, or they can haunt and consume the dreamer. Technology can give life to beauty, or it can enslave the soul in illusion. The power to create dinosaurs is also the power to deceive — to make shadows seem like gods. Herzog warns us, as the ancients warned of fire and flight, that the gift of creation is also a test of wisdom. The same light that illuminates can also blind, if wielded without conscience.

Consider the story of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from the gods to give to man. That fire was both salvation and curse. It lit the first hearth and forged the first blade, but it also brought suffering, for Prometheus’s theft defied the divine order. Technology, Herzog suggests, is the fire of our age — a power that can kindle wonder or destruction. When we create worlds on the screen, we are not merely playing with light; we are playing with memory, myth, and imagination. We must therefore use this fantastic tool not to escape reality, but to re-enchant it — to remind ourselves that dreaming is an act of creation, and creation is an act of responsibility.

In his films and philosophy, Herzog teaches that the goal of art — whether through technology or tradition — is to awaken what he calls “ecstatic truth”: that higher reality glimpsed through beauty, pain, and wonder. The dinosaurs of cinema are symbols of this truth. They are not real, yet they stir our hearts with the grandeur of what once was. They remind us that imagination is the bridge between the past that is gone and the future not yet born. When technology serves this purpose — when it deepens our sense of awe and belonging in the universe — then it becomes indeed “as good as dreams are.”

So let this be the teaching: use technology not as a crutch for imagination, but as its companion. Let your inventions serve vision, not vanity. Create not to dazzle, but to reveal; not to escape the world, but to rediscover its sacredness. Remember that every screen, every tool, every algorithm is a mirror of the human mind — capable of light or shadow depending on the hand that wields it. When you use this power to resurrect what is lost, to express what cannot be said, you walk the same path as the first dreamers in their caves. And then, as Herzog proclaims, your art, your science, your creation will indeed be as good as dreams are — a living testament to the divine spark that still burns within humankind.