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Imagination Quotes

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Imagination Quotes

“I think the arts has great potential to create citizens. Citizenship is about the direction your imagination travels. We can't plan or calculate or examine citizenship; it's an imagined thing. Community is an imagined thing. And if your imagination isn't working - and, of course, in oppressed people that's the first thing that goes - you can't imagine anything better. Once you can imagine something different, something better, then you're on your way.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWayFirstsArtDifferentCoursesCommunityImaginationImaginePlansCitizensOppressedCitizenshipSomething Better
Author:Lee Maracle
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“That in these times every serious person should not in his heart have felt some difliculty with the doctrines of the incarnation, I cannot helieve. We are not as we were. When Christianity was first published, the imagination of mankind presented the relation of heaven to earth very differently from what it does now.”

ShouldFirstsHeartPersonsDoeEarthHeavenFeltImaginationChristianityMankindSeriousRelationDoctrineIncarnationSerious Person
Author:James Anthony Froude
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“The student who would build his knowledge on solid foundations, and proceed by just degrees to the pinnacles of truth, is directed by the great philosopher of France to begin by doubting of his own existence. In like manner, whoever would complete any arduous and intricate enterprise, should, as soon as his imagination can cool after the first blaze of hope, place before his own eyes every possible embarrassment that may retard or defeat him. He should first question the probability of success, and then endeavour to remove the objections that he has raised.”

ShouldFirstsMayEyeImaginationExistenceDoubtStudentsTruth IsDegreesFoundationRaisedDefeatPhilosopherFranceEnterpriseRemoveProbabilityEmbarrassmentObjectionsEndeavourIntricatePinnacleRetardSolid FoundationGreat Philosophers
Book:The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752
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“Chris [ Nolan] and I have a strange way of working from the non-movie process, where after all these conversations and reading the script and more conversations, Chris went out and shot the films and the first thing he did, he wouldn't show it to me until I had written the music - not out of meanness, or anything, it just sort of seemed an interesting idea to see if there was some synchronicity and letting me use my imagination to the fullest instead of being constricted by cuts and images.”

IfsWayFirstsIdeasUseShowsFilmReadingProcessImaginationInterestingCuttingWrittenStrangeConversationShotsScriptsMy ImaginationMeannessSynchronicityNolanInteresting Ideas
Author:Christopher Nolan
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“Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.”

KnowsFirstsDoeArtFeelingsArtistCertainImaginationEmotionObjectsKeysCreaturesRelationLaysIntenseLimitationBarriersCompositionSplendidNew WorkDecide Upon
Book:Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing as an Art
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“The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily routine to respond to rappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience.”

FirstsHumansMatterEnoughFeelingsCertainCoursesImaginationCommonGreaterEventsReaderTasteDemandDegreesOrdinaryCapacityMajorityRapTalesAppealsRoutineSpellsSentimentalHuman ExperienceDetachmentDistortionDay LifeDaily RoutinesMacabre
Book:H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)
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“In our imaginations the adults of our childhood remain extreme, essential - we might say radical since they are the roots that fed luxuriant later systems. Those first bohemians, for instance, stay operatic in memory even though were we to meet them today - well, what would we think, we who've elaborated our eccentricities with a patience, a professionalism they never knew?”

ThinkingFirstsWellsMightTodayImaginationMemoriesChildhoodEssentialsAdultsRootsOur ChildrenExtremesInstanceRadicalFedsProfessionalismEccentricity
Author:Edmund White
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“Everest has a special place in all of our imaginations. For centuries, Everest was a little bit like the moon. It was the place where everyone wanted to go. Empires wanted to be able to say that they were the first to put a climber on top of Everest. So when a tragedy happens up on that mountain, I think it has a global resonance. Everybody's heard of Everest. Everybody knows what Everest is and what it means, and the significance.”

ThinkingKnowsFirstsMeanLittlesHappensAbleWantedBitsImaginationHeardSpecialCenturyMoonMountainLittle BitTragedyEmpiresSignificanceResonanceEverestSpecial PlacesClimbers
Author:Richard Engel
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“Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward.”

ShouldWritingFirstsHeartChildrenBookYoungWinningImaginationNovelWonderfulWrittenSweetReaderPleaseFameRegardRewardsCaughtPossessionLovelyDevelopingI Have LearnedEvidentInabilityGetting OldPlease MeLovely ThingsWispsGreat Novels
Author:L. Frank Baum
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“Humans have changed the landscape so much, but images of the sea could be shared with primordial people. I just project my imagination on to the viewer, even the first human being. I think first and then imagine some scenes. Then I go out and look for them. Or I re-create these images with my camera. I love photography because photography is the most believable medium. Painting can lie, but photography never lies: that is what people used to believe.”

PeopleThinkingFirstsBelieveHumansLooksUsedLyingImaginationHuman BeingsImagineSeaChangedPaintingSceneProjectsPhotographyCamerasPhotographerMediumsLandscapeViewersMy ImaginationBelievableNever LiePhotography Love
Author:Hiroshi Sugimoto
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“The most controversial issues of the twenty-first century will pertain to the ends and means of modifying human behavior and who shall determine them. The first educational question will not be 'what knowledge is of the most worth?' but 'what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce?' The possibilities virtually defy our imagination.”

FirstsHumansKindMeanEndsWishImaginationHuman BeingsIssuesCenturyPossibilityProduceBehaviorTwentiesDetermineEducationalHuman BehaviorControversialModifyingControversial IssuesEnds And Means
Author:John Goodlad
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“In voicing so much is left to your imagination to create the world around you like that. It's really the essence of what's so fun for, I think, many people when they first start to want to be an actor, is that they realise they enjoy making up a world around them to exist in, a whole situation and a whole way of being. And even more so than theatre, animation requires that because there's just nothing to go on. It's in your head and your heart or it's not there at all.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWayWantFirstsHeartWholeActorsLeftFunEnjoyImaginationSituationGoes OnEssenceTheatreRealisingAnimationMaking Up
Author:Jim Parsons
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“In the one instance, the dreamerloses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestionsuntilhe finds the incitamentum, or first cause of his musings,... forgotten. In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance.”

FirstsCausesImaginationVisionCasesObjectsSightImportanceAssumingForgottenMediumsInstancePrimariesWildernessUnrealForgetfulnessFrivolousDeductionsMusings
Author:Edgar Allan Poe
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“The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid, and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so to speak. The aesthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of aesthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”

FirstsHumansArtGodFormArtistSpeakImaginationBehindsExistenceMysteryCryCreationMaterialsPersonalityRemainsMoodInvisibleNarrativeDramaticAccomplishedAestheticIndifferentAestheticsFluidRefinedFingernailsCadenceHuman ImaginationHandiwork
Author:James Joyce
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“In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.”

FirstsPersonsMatterImaginationViewsPartySubjectsPerspectiveReaderThirdsPoint Of ViewEncountersDistinctionInvitesRepresentationObserversPornographyEroticSubject MatterFirst PersonThird Person
Book:Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation
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“Used with due abstinence, hope acts as a healthful tonic; intemperately indulged, as an enervating opiate. The visions of future triumph, which at first animate exertion, if dwelt upon too intently, will usurp the place of the stern reality; and, noble objects will be contemplated, not for their own inherent worth, but on account of the day-dreams they engender. Thus hope, aided by imagination, makes one man a hero, another a somnambulist, and a third a lunatic; while it renders them all enthusiasts.”

IfsMenFirstsDreamRealityUsedHopeImaginationVisionObjectsHeroThirdsAccountsDuesNobleTriumphOne ManInherentLunaticExertionAbstinenceOpiates
Author:James Fitzjames Stephen
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“A fiction which is designed to inculcate an object wholly alien to the imagination sins against the first law of art; and if a writer of fiction narrow his scope to particulars so positive as polemical controversy in matters ecclesiastical, political or moral, his work may or may not be an able treatise, but it must be a very poor novel.”

IfsFirstsMayArtMatterAbleLawPoliticalImaginationSinPoorFictionMoralNovelObjectsAliensControversyScope
Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
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“There must be a solemn and terrible aloneness that comes over the child as he takes those first independent steps. All this is lost to memory and we can only reconstruct it through analogies in later life....To the child who takes his first steps and finds himself walking alone, this moment must bring the first sharp sense of the uniqueness and separateness of his body and his person, the discovery of the solitary self.”

FirstsChildrenPersonsSelfMomentsBodyLostImaginationMemoriesStepsTerribleWalkingDiscoveryIndependentFirst StepsSolitaryUniquenessSolemnAnalogiesSeparatenessWalking Alone
Author:Selma Fraiberg
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“For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain... For the first time my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror. Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true, I hate your God." From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on that day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I have passionately hated every orthodox creed. That Sermon did some good.”

IfsFirstsSaidChristianPainLyingHateEvilImaginationReligiousHellDoubtHorrorEternalUnderstoodFirst TimeI HateDepthHatedFlamesHeightNo DoubtOrthodoxCreedsDogmaHate YouNo FearSermonsMy ImaginationI Hate You
Author:Robert Green Ingersoll
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“The catastrophe story, whoever may tell it, represents a constructive and positive act by the imagination rather than a negative one, an attempt to confront the terrifying void of a patently meaningless universe by challenging it at its own game. [. . .] Each one of these fantasies represents an arraignment of the finite, an attempt to dismantle the formal structure of time and space which the universe wraps around us at the moment we first achieve consciousness.”

FirstsMayMomentsStoriesUniverseGamesImaginationChallengesSpaceConsciousnessFantasyAchieveNegativeStructureMeaninglessVoidFormalCatastropheApocalypseFiniteTime And SpaceWrapsConstructive
Author:J. G. Ballard
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“Generally, youth is like the first cogitations, not so wise as the second. For there is a youth in thoughts, as well as in ages. And yet the invention of young men, is more lively than that of old; and imaginations stream into their minds better, and, as it were, more divinely.”

MenMindFirstsWellsAgeYoungImaginationWiseYouthInventionYoung ManStreamsLively
Book:The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, Lord High Chancellor of England ...: With Several Additional Pieces, Never Before Printed in Any Edition of His Works. To which is Prefixed, a New Life of the Author
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“First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.”

FirstsIdeasRealityActionImaginationActingVisionWisePlansInspirational LifeOrganizationTransformationNew BeginningsMy ImaginationProject ManagementPower Of The MindThink And Grow RichThink Rich Grow RichNew ProjectsImagination And RealityImagination RealityLucky Breaks
Book:Become Your Best
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“What's your story? It's all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art, and then a way of traveling from here to there.”

WorldWayFirstsMeanArtStoriesLostImaginationSeaFiguresEmpathySpreadArchitectureIceStorytellerCompassLove SomeoneGeographyNavigateTelling StoriesVastnessArctic
Author:Rebecca Solnit
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“He who perceives in the spiritual world must know that at times Imaginations are assigned to him which at first he must forego understanding; he must receive them as Imaginations and let them ripen in his soul as such. In spiritual experience, much depends on a man having the patience to make observations, at first to simply accept them, and to wait with understanding them until the right moment arrives.”

KnowsMenWorldFirstsSoulMomentsSpiritualWaitingUnderstandingImaginationAcceptingDependsObservationPerceiveRight MomentSpiritual Experience
Author:Rudolf Steiner
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“In my perfect imagination, with stern discipline I rise with the first bird, salute the dawn, have a healthy breakfast of fruits, wander over to my faux-oak desk, tap the On button on my Macbook Air, acknowledge the muse, and skip into the world where the story flows over the day and into the night.”

WorldFirstsStoriesNightImaginationPerfectAirDisciplineHealthyBirdFlowFruitWanderDawnAcknowledgeBreakfastButtonsDesksMuseOaksSkipSaluteFauxMacbookMacbook Air
Author:Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
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“I'll always love Paraguay. It's this most exotic place configured out of the imagination, the whole country.Paraguay will always be a special place in my heart. I go back a long way. I first arrived as a refugee in 1982 from the Falklands War. So it was a safe haven then, and it has become something exotic since then. I feel like I'd like the dust to settle a little bit before going back.”

WayFeelsFirstsHeartLittlesLongWarCountryWholeBitsImaginationSpecialHavensMy HeartSafeLittle BitDustSettlingRefugeeLong WayExoticSpecial PlacesSafe HavenParaguayFalklandsExotic Places
Author:John Gimlette
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