The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were and ask why not?”.”
—John F. Kennedy (1917–63) American Head of State, Journalist
It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object; beware of this stumbling block.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
Imagination arises in between our eyebrows, not from the intellect.
—Hans Taeger
The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination. Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.
—Jules Verne (1828–1905) French Novelist
It is the divine attribute of the imagination, that when the real world is shut out it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power can conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions to make solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of a dungeon.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
The “Spirit of Evil “entices a man in this world, and testifies against him in the next.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
All meaningful and lasting change starts first in your imagination and then works its way out. Imagination is more important than knowledge. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Imagination is the air of mind.
—Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) English Poet
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to popular belief, is more powerful in the mature than the young.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything; it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.
—Shunryu Suzuki (1904–71) Zen Buddhist Monk, Author
Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead.
—Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) American Surgeon, Motivational Writer
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
Man’s mind stretched by a new idea, never goes back to its original dimensions.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I dream things that never were, and say, “Why not?”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. Man alone can direct his success mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability.
—Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) American Surgeon, Motivational Writer
There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica.
—Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) Canadian Political Scientist, Humorist
Begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like. Go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements. Play them over and over to yourself.
—Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) American Surgeon, Motivational Writer
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
In contemplation, if a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
Know you what it is to be a child? It is to be something very different from the man of to-day. It is to have a spirit yet streaming from the waters of baptism; it is to believe in love, to believe in loveliness, to believe in belief; it is to be so little that the elves can reach to whisper in your ear; it is to turn pumpkins into coaches, and mice into horses, lowness into loftiness, and nothing into everything, for each child has its fairy godmother in its own soul; it is to live in a nutshell and to count yourself the king of infinite space; it is To see a world in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour; it is to know not as yet that you are under sentence of life, nor petition that it be commuted into death.
—Francis Thompson (1859–1907) English Poet, Ascetic
I think the world really boils down to two types of people – those who see shapes in cloud formations, and those who just see clouds.
—Danzae Pace
Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
An idea is salvation by imagination.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.
—Walt Disney (1901–66) American Entrepreneur
Creativity represents a miraculous coming together of the uninhibited energy of the child with its apparent opposite and enemy-the sense of order imposed on the disciplined adult intelligence.
—Norman Podhoretz (b.1930) American Political Activist, Columnist, Author
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The great successful men of the world have used their imagination…they think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building – steadily building.
—Robert Collier (1885–1950) American Self-Help Author
The “evil imagination “takes advantage only of visible objects.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
Any successful journey begins by packing your luggage full of imagination.
—Kathrine Palmer Peterson (1956–2006) American Author of Grief Books
To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.
—Cynthia Ozick (b.1928) American Novelist, Short-story Writer, Essayist
When you stop having dreams and ideals — well, you might as well stop altogether.
—Marian Anderson (1897–1993) American Singer
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
—Anna Freud (1895–1982) Austrian-British Child Psychoanalyst
Fear is only an illusion. It is the illusion that creates the feeling of separateness — the false sense of isolation that exists only in your imagination.
—Jeraldine Saunders (1923–2019) American Writer, Television Personality
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.
—Anatole France (1844–1924) French Novelist
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) American Poet
It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.
—Stephen Vizinczey (b.1933) Hungarian-born Canadian Novelist, Literary Critic, Author
Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative success mechanism within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or willpower.
—Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) American Surgeon, Motivational Writer
By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.
—Dorothea Brande (1893–1948) American Writer, Editor
For imagination sets the goal “picture” which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of “will,” as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
—Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) American Surgeon, Motivational Writer
The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.
—Margaret Atwood (b.1939) Canadian Writer, Poet, Critic
First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
—Carl Sagan (1934–96) American Astronomer
Imagination
Imagination—sparks dreams and laughter,
Dissolves barriers, expands knowledge and lights the mind.
Imagination also holds captive in dark places
Both the weak and strong, liquefies courage,
Builds enormous insurmountable fear.
—Unknown
Peak performers develop powerful mental images of the behavior that will lead to the desired results. They see in their mind’s eye the result they want, and the actions leading to it.
—Charles A. Garfield (b.1944) American Psychologist
I remembered a story of how Bach was approached by a young admirer one day and asked, “But Papa Bach, how do you manage to think of all these new tunes?” “My dear fellow,” Bach is said to have answered, according to my version, “I have no need to think of them. I have the greatest difficulty not to step on them when I get out of bed in the morning and start moving around my room”.
—Laurens van der Post (1906–96) South African-born British Political leader, Author, Educator, Journalist, Humanitarian
Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
I have come to the conclusion that politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
—Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) French General, Statesman
Man is an imagining being.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
An evil eye, an “evil imagination,” and misanthropy banish a man from the world.
—The Talmud Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith
So you see, imagination needs coddling–long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) American Journalist, Editor, Writer, Teacher
The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
—John Berger (1926–2017) English Art Critic, Novelist
I like nonsense—it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope… and that enables you to laugh at all of life’s realities.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
—Jack London (1876–1916) American Novelist
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind’s eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American Baptist Minister
The wonderful thing about books is that they allow us to enter imaginatively into someone else’s life. And when we do that, we learn to sympathize with other people. But the real surprise is that we also learn truths about ourselves, about our own lives that somehow we hadn’t been able to see before.
—Katherine Paterson (b.1932) American Novelist, Writer
I doubt the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, that child would grow up to be an eggplant.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science fiction and fantasy writer
To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery –even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness –is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.
—Andre Breton (1896–1966) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. — Not being able to enlarge the one, let us contract the other; for it is from their difference that all the evils arise which render us unhappy.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.
—Isaac Newton (1643–1727) English Physicist, Mathematician, Astronomer, Theologian
People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) Irish Poet, Dramatist
Celebrate what you want to see more of.
—Tom Peters (b.1942) American Management Consultant, Author
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
—Unknown
It is better to be high-spirited, even though one makes more mistakes, than to be narrow-minded and all too prudent. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love, is well done.
—Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) Dutch Painter
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
—Louisa May Alcott (1832–88) American Novelist
What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
—Laurence J. Peter (1919–90) Canadian-born American Educator, Author
Capability means imagination…
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
Our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist