Imagination is where every invention, artwork, and act of rebellion started. These quotes celebrate the ability to see what does not yet exist and the courage it takes to bring it into the world, even when people call you crazy.
“The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability.”
“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”
“The public has an appetite for anything about imagination - anything that is as far away from reality as is creatively possible.”
“You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.”
“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.”
“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.”
“Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it - often far, far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on, based on preliminary successes.”
“I do a lot of curiosity buying I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination. I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.”
“Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.”
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
“The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?”
“Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.”
“We are more often frightened than hurt and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
“The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.”
“Everything that is new or uncommon raises a pleasure in the imagination, because it fills the soul with an agreeable surprise, gratifies its curiosity, and gives it an idea of which it was not before possessed.”
“My greatest strength as a child, I realize now, was my imagination. While every other kid was reading and writing, I had seven whole hours a day to practice my imagination. When do you get that space in your life, ever?”