The human ability to imagine that which is not yet in existence is a source of creativity and reverence. Imagination may be more important than knowledge, and it is an important source of problem-solving and art. Great writers and thinkers have explored the concept of imagination, and here’s some of what they have to say:
It is the human condition to question one god after another, one appearance after another, or better, one apparition after another, always pursuing the truth of the imagination, which is not the same as the truth of appearance.
Those who can imagine anything, can create the impossible.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
When I examined myself and my methods of thought, I came to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
Discovery consists in seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
If you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.
Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.
The root of all fear is imagination.
It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.
Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world.
So you see, imagination needs noodling — long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering.
Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.
Nothing happens unless first we dream.
The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.
When I open my eyes in the morning, I am not confronted by the world, but by a million possible worlds.
Beyond all sciences, philosophies, theologies, and histories, a child’s relentless inquiry is truly all it takes to remind us that we don’t know as much as we think we know.
Affliction is more apt to suffocate the imagination than to stimulate it.
I say to the young: “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively.”
Heaven is so far of the Mind
That were the Mind dissolved—
The Site—of it—by Architect
Could not again be proved—
‘Tis vast—as our Capacity—
As fair—as our idea—
To Him of adequate desire
No further ’tis, than Here—
The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —
The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —
The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —
Man is like a tree, with the mighty trunk of intellect, the spreading branches of imagination, and the roots of the lower instincts that bind him to the earth. The moral life, however, is the fruit he bears; in it his true nature is revealed.
The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land when they see nothing but sea.
Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.
When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.
What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death.
