Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

imagination

Death is the tyrant of the imagination. 3 quotes from Barry Cornwall

Having imagination it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that if you were unimaginative would take you only a minute. 8 wisdom & wit from Franklin P. Adams

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking. 20 quotes from George S. Patton

If you use your imagination, you can look at any actress and see her nude... I hope to make you use your imagination. 14 more quotes from Hedy Lamarr

Imagination is at the root of much that passes for love. 4 views from Gilbert Parker

Imagination is the key to my lyrics. The rest is painted with a little science fiction. 22 wisdom & wit from Jimi Hendrix

Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow. 32 more quotes from William Blake

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. 9 quotes from Carl Sagan

It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination. 2 other quotes from Martha Gellhorn

Jehovah God is truly rich far beyond the imagination of humankind. 2 more thoughts from Joseph Franklin Rutherford

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. 78 quotes from Voltaire

Reason is the natural order of truth but imagination is the organ of meaning. 25 views from C. S. Lewis

You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. 98 quotes from Mark Twain

You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination. 19 quotes from Charles de Gaulle

Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together. 4 views from Jacques Maritain

The loss of liberty which must attend being a wife was of all things the most horrible to my imagination. 2 more views from Sarah Fielding

A lady's imagination is very rapid it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. 21 quotes from Jane Austen

Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world. 23 sayings from Walt Disney

For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free. 11 sayings from Manuel Puig

I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse. 23 views from Walt Disney

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding. 58 quotes from Thomas Carlyle

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything. 23 more thoughts from Henry Miller

Love doesn't grow on trees like apples in Eden - it's something you have to make. And you must use your imagination too. 4 quotes from Joyce Cary

Never forget that the key to the situation lies in the will and not in the imagination. 4 other views from Evelyn Underhill

One of the virtues of being very young is that you don't let the facts get in the way of your imagination. 3 more views from Sam Levenson

Personally, I would sooner have written Alice in Wonderland than the whole Encyclopedia Britannica. 8 more views from Stephen Leacock

The degree in which a poet's imagination dominates reality is, in the end, the exact measure of his importance and dignity. 46 more thoughts from George Santayana

When one paints an ideal, one does not need to limit one's imagination. 4 quotes from Ellen Key

All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers. 25 more quotes from Orison Swett Marden

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. 19 other views from Edgar Allan Poe

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. 10 wisdom & wit from Edward Abbey

Falling in love consists merely in uncorking the imagination and bottling the common sense. 23 other quotes from Helen Rowland

I try to decorate my imagination as much as I can. 5 wisdom & wit from Franz Schubert

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young. 29 more quotes from W. Somerset Maugham

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not a sense of humor to console him for what he is. 67 thoughts from Francis Bacon

It is not enough to know your craft - you have to have feeling. Science is all very well, but for us imagination is worth far more. 3 wisdom & wit from Edouard Manet

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people. 5 thoughts from Patricia Highsmith

Our thoughts and imagination are the only real limits to our possibilities. 25 more views from Orison Swett Marden

People can die of mere imagination. 6 thoughts from Geoffrey Chaucer

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led. 19 quotes from Edgar Allan Poe

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings but none when they are under the influence of imagination. 37 more sayings from Edmund Burke

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. 67 thoughts from Francis Bacon

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night. 19 other quotes from Edgar Allan Poe

To my mind the boy who gives least promise is one in whom the critical faculty develops in advance of the imagination. 12 more thoughts from Quintilian

Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it. 2 more views from Robinson Jeffers

Shakespeare fascinated me. He hardly ever left the country. His imagination was worldwide though reading. 3 other quotes from Michael Tippett

Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have. 8 thoughts from James Dean

Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination. 19 other wisdom & wit from Alfred North Whitehead

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life. 25 wisdom & wit from Simone Weil

Imagination is as good as many voyages - and how much cheaper! 6 sayings from George William Curtis

Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant. 73 quotes from Victor Hugo

Man lives by imagination. 16 quotes from Havelock Ellis

One travels to run away from routine, that dreadful routine that kills all imagination and all our capacity for enthusiasm. 6 other quotes from Ella Maillart

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character. 24 other wisdom & wit from James Russell Lowell

The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination. 4 sayings from George Meredith

There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do. 21 wisdom & wit from Anais Nin

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. 23 wisdom & wit from Thomas A. Edison

To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination. 12 quotes from George Jean Nathan

A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing. 3 more quotes from Charles M. Schwab

The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination. 4 more views from James A. Michener

Do not quench your inspiration and your imagination do not become the slave of your model. 23 other quotes from Vincent Van Gogh

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. 105 quotes from Albert Einstein

I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty. 105 quotes from Albert Einstein

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. 16 other views from Michelangelo

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions. 105 other quotes from Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge. 105 views from Albert Einstein

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. 105 other views from Albert Einstein

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. 105 other quotes from Albert Einstein

There can be no passion, and by consequence no love, where there is not imagination. 5 thoughts from William Godwin

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! 8 more quotes from Dr. Seuss

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous. 23 other quotes from Vincent Van Gogh

That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow. 3 thoughts from George Berkeley

A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist. 9 other quotes from Vladimir Nabokov

Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely. 41 quotes from Marcus Aurelius

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. 13 more thoughts from Immanuel Kant

He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. 18 quotes from Washington Irving

If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies. 8 quotes from Karl Kraus

Imagination is not the exclusive appanage of artists, but belongs in varying degrees to all men. 9 more views from George Henry Lewes

Imagination is the air of mind. 6 other quotes from Philip James Bailey

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory. 18 views from Emile M. Cioran

Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination. 9 more wisdom & wit from George Henry Lewes

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact. 81 other thoughts from William Shakespeare

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory. 70 other views from Thomas Jefferson

The power of imagination makes us infinite. 13 quotes from John Muir

The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury. 11 views from Charlie Chaplin

The source and center of all man's creative power... is his power of making images, or the power of imagination. 9 thoughts from Robert Collier

There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory. 42 sayings from Josh Billings

To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all. 20 sayings from Anatole France

To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another. 17 more views from John Burroughs

Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. 9 more quotes from Ludwig Wittgenstein

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? 27 more thoughts from Leonardo da Vinci

A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache. 6 other thoughts from Catherine the Great

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. 26 quotes from Harry S. Truman

He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet. 14 more quotes from Joseph Joubert

Imagination creates reality. 3 thoughts from Richard Wagner

Imagination is the eye of the soul. 14 thoughts from Joseph Joubert

Imagination is the true magic carpet. 11 quotes from Norman Vincent Peale

One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet. 14 more wisdom & wit from Joseph Joubert

Science does not know its debt to imagination. 135 thoughts from Ralph Waldo Emerson

The scientific imagination always restrains itself within the limits of probability. 33 wisdom & wit from Thomas Huxley

There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. 52 wisdom & wit from Gilbert K. Chesterton

True change takes place in the imagination. 7 other thoughts from Thomas Moore

Where there is no imagination there is no horror. 14 other thoughts from Arthur Conan Doyle

The human imagination has already come to conceive the possibility of recreating human society. 2 views from Edmund Wilson

The product of the scientific imagination is a new vision of relations - like that of artistic imagination. 2 views from Edmund Wilson

The thing about imagination is that by the very act of putting it down, there must be some truth in one's own imagination. 5 wisdom & wit from Dennis Potter

To think, and to feel, constitute the two grand divisions of men of genius - the men of reasoning and the men of imagination. 3 quotes from Isaac D'Israeli

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. 17 quotes from Antoine de Saint-Exupery

An idea is salvation by imagination. 26 sayings from Frank Lloyd Wright

Faith is spiritualized imagination. 58 quotes from Henry Ward Beecher

Happiness is ideal, it is the work of the imagination. 12 more thoughts from Marquis de Sade

I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening. 6 more wisdom & wit from Jerzy Kosinski

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. 47 thoughts from George Orwell

Imagination decides everything. 57 more views from Blaise Pascal

Imagination disposes of everything it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world. 57 thoughts from Blaise Pascal

It is the eye of ignorance that assigns a fixed and unchangeable color to every object beware of this stumbling block. 4 more sayings from Paul Gauguin

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books. 5 more thoughts from Gaston Bachelard

Men often take their imagination for their heart and they believe they are converted as soon as they think of being converted. 57 other wisdom & wit from Blaise Pascal

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind. 28 more wisdom & wit from William Butler Yeats

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. 58 quotes from Henry Ward Beecher

This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts. 9 other views from Adam Smith

Truth titillates the imagination far less than fiction. 12 more quotes from Marquis de Sade

We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality. 7 quotes from Judy Garland

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind it is a way of engaging reality. 2 other quotes from Irving Howe

Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels. 3 more views from Luigi Pirandello

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination. 19 more views from Carl Jung

Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination. 35 views from Ernest Hemingway

Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza. 12 wisdom & wit from Franz Kafka

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. 117 more sayings from Henry David Thoreau

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. 115 more quotes from George Bernard Shaw

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart it being much more sensitive. 117 sayings from Henry David Thoreau

Let us leave pretty women to men devoid of imagination. 18 wisdom & wit from Marcel Proust

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. 8 quotes from Edward Hopper

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. 117 views from Henry David Thoreau

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. 19 quotes from Carl Jung

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. 117 quotes from Henry David Thoreau

There is no connection between the political ideas of our educated class and the deep places of the imagination. 6 thoughts from Lionel Trilling

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. 7 quotes from Jorge Luis Borges

I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. 2 views from Man Ray

Imagination rules the world. 50 wisdom & wit from Napoleon Bonaparte

Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future. 11 quotes from Charles Kettering

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. 19 other wisdom & wit from Percy Bysshe Shelley

The great instrument of moral good is the imagination. 19 wisdom & wit from Percy Bysshe Shelley

The human race is governed by its imagination. 50 quotes from Napoleon Bonaparte

We especially need imagination in science. 8 more wisdom & wit from Maria Mitchell

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. 5 more quotes from Maria Montessori

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven it is my inheritance, I suppose. 2 quotes from Elinor Wylie

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea. 19 quotes from H. G. Wells

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. 60 sayings from H. L. Mencken

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. 60 other quotes from H. L. Mencken

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art. 2 views from Clara Schumann

One is never fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines. 90 wisdom & wit from Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt. 4 other views from Henry George

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are. 63 more views from Samuel Johnson

Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth. 15 views from Cyril Connolly

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess. 63 other views from Samuel Johnson

But who can paint like Nature? Can imagination boast, amid its gay creation, hues like hers? 5 sayings from James Thomson

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. 9 wisdom & wit from John Dewey

He is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts. 3 quotes from Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality. 4 views from Jonas Salk

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, and the truth of imagination. 19 quotes from John Keats

I imagine that yes is the only living thing. 13 views from e. e. cummings

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. 29 thoughts from Pablo Picasso

If my accent betrayed my foreign birth, it also stamped me as an enemy, in the imagination of the producers. 6 more wisdom & wit from Bela Lugosi

In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. 16 other views from Wallace Stevens

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination. 13 wisdom & wit from e. e. cummings

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived. 18 more sayings from John Adams

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. 19 quotes from John Keats

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. 17 more quotes from John Lennon

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never. 24 views from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates. 100 more views from Oscar Wilde

The imagination is man's power over nature. 16 more quotes from Wallace Stevens

There is hope in dreams, imagination, and in the courage of those who wish to make those dreams a reality. 4 views from Jonas Salk

To put yourself in another's place requires real imagination, but by doing so each Girl Scout will be able to love among others happily. 2 quotes from Juliette Gordon Low

We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark. 16 more quotes from Wallace Stevens

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth. 19 quotes from John Keats

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. 24 sayings from Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There are two worlds: the world we can measure with line and rule, and the world that we feel with our hearts and imagination. 6 more quotes from Leigh Hunt