IMAGINATION QUOTES
quotations about imagination
The imagination is man’s power over nature.
WALLACE STEVENS
"Adagia," Opus Posthumous
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will be as one.
JOHN LENNON
"Imagine"
Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarse senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
JOHN MUIR
"The National Parks and Forest Reservations", Sierra Club Bulletin, January 1896
They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"Eleonora"
Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may in this respect be compared to those angels whom the scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
MUHAMMAD ALI
Newsweek, 1975
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
A Midsummer Night's Dream
The bird Imagination,
That flies so far, that dies so soon;
Her wings are colored like the sun,
Her breast is colored like the moon.
ELINOR WYLIE
"The Falcon"
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
HENRY MILLER
Sexus
It is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is irrepressible, unconfinable; 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 the dungeon.
WASHINGTON IRVING
The Sketch-book of Geoffrey Crayon
But how much better, in any case, to wonder than not to wonder, to dance with astonishment and go spinning in praise, than not to know enough to dance or praise at all; to be blessed with more imagination than you might know at the given moment what to do with than to be cursed with too little to give you -- and other people -- any trouble.
EUDORA WELTY
New York Times Book Review, Mar. 24, 1974
Our imagination flies: we are its shadow on the earth.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
The Sea and the Honeycomb: A Book of Tiny Poems
Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities.
L. FRANK BAUM
intro, The Lost Princess of Oz
Your imagination, my dear fellow, is worth more than you imagine.
LOUIS ARAGON
Paris Peasant
Imagination, that magic glass
That colours all the pictures of the brain.
C. B. LANGSTON
"Old Age"
Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.
JULES DE GAUTIER
attributed, The Little Giant Encyclopedia of Inspirational Quotes
We do not need magic to change the world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
J. K. ROWLING
speech to Harvard Alumni Association, 2008
Imagination, n. A warehouse of facts, with poet and liar in joint ownership.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
MARK TWAIN
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden