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
What is now proved was once only imagin’d.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
We have been endowed with the capacity and the power to create desirable pictures within and to find them automatically in the outer world of our environment.
—John D. MacDonald (1916–86) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
I believe that there never was a creator of a philosophical system who did not confess at the end of his life that he had wasted his time. It must be admitted that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men that the inventors of syllogisms. He who imagined a ship towers considerably above him who imagined innate ideas.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
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
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
—Jack London (1876–1916) American Novelist
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
You are indebted to your imagination for three-fourths of your importance.
—David Garrick (1717–79) English Actor, Theatre Manager, Playwright
You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization.
—Denis Waitley (b.1933) American Motivational Speaker, Author
To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is. He said, “you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.”
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
—Anna Freud (1895–1982) Austrian-British Child Psychoanalyst
Our imagination flies; we are its shadow on the earth.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
You gave me the key of your heart, my love; then why did you make me knock? Oh that was yesterday, saints above! And last night—I changed the lock!
—John Boyle O’Reilly (1844–90) Irish-American Journalist, Political Agitator
If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. Try the “as if” technique.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
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
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
If a man proves too clearly and convincingly to himself…that a tiger is an optical illusion—well, he will find out he is wrong. The tiger will himself intervene in the discussion, in a manner which will be in every sense conclusive.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination.
—Unknown
Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason.
—Unknown
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
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Capability means imagination…
—Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American Author, Journalist, Attorney, Lecturer
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge—that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts—That hope always triumphs over experience—That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
—Robert Fulghum (b.1937) American Unitarian Universalist Author, Essayist, Clergyman
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
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized.
—M. C. Richards (1916–99) American Poet, Potter, Writer
This world is but a canvas to our imagination.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
—Jessamyn West
The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness.
—John Keats (1795–1821) English Poet
Everything you can imagine is real.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
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
Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.
—Robert H. Schuller (1926–2015) American Christian Televangelist, Author
We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Discovery consists in seeing what everyone else has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
—Unknown
When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries.
—Marquis de Sade (1740–1814) French Political leader, Revolutionary, Novelist, Poet, Critic
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
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
When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (1832–98) British Anglican Author, Mathematician, Clergyman, Photographer, Logician
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.
—William Arthur Ward (1921–94) American Author
Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
When you stop having dreams and ideals—well, you might as well stop altogether.
—Marian Anderson (1897–1993) American Singer
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
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
To me this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason?
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality.
—Irving Howe (1920–93) American Literary, Social Critic
Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.
—Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian-American Electrical Engineer, Inventor