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Imagination Quotes

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Imagination Quotes

“It is the political task of the social scientist — as of any liberal educator — continually to translate personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of their human meaning for a variety of individuals. It is his task to display in his work — and, as an educator, in his life as well — this kind of sociological imagination. And it is his purpose to cultivate such habits of mind among the men and women who are publicly exposed to him. To secure these ends is to secure reason and individuality, and to make these the predominant values of a democratic society.”

MenMindHumansWellsKindEndsReasonPoliticalPurposeValuesIndividualSocialTermImaginationIssuesTroubleHe ManHabitMen And WomenTasksScientistDemocraticIndividualitySecureVarietyExposedDisplayTranslateEducatorDemocratic SocietySociologicalHabits Of Mind
Book:The Sociological Imagination
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“I have often been surprised that Mathematics, the quintessence of Truth, should have found admirers so few and so languid. Frequent consideration and minute scrutiny have at length unravelled the cause: viz . that though Reason is feasted, Imagination is starved; whilst Reason is luxuriating in its proper Paradise, Imagination is wearily travelling on a dreary desert.”

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Book:The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria
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“The imagination ... that reconciling and mediatory power, which incorporating the reason in images of the sense and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves, and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors.”

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Book:Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions
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“I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am now certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and the reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know.”

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Book:The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume IV: Early Essays
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“The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed. There is no reason why, existing outside ourselves, a real place should conform to the pictures in our memory rather than those in our dreams.”

ShouldRealReasonDreamRealityImaginationMemoriesDestroyedReason WhyNo ReasonConformOur DreamsArbitraryOur MemoriesElusiveSelected
Book:In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“Imagination, where it is truly creative, is a faculty, and not a quality; it looks before and after, it gives the form that makes all the parts work together harmoniously toward a given end, its seat is in the higher reason, and it is efficient only as a servant of the will. Imagination, as it is too often misunderstood, is mere fantasy, the image-making power, common to all who have the gift of dreams.”

GivingLooksEndsReasonDreamTogetherFormGivenImaginationCommonQualityFantasyCreativeHigherMereServantSeatsWorking TogetherFacultyEfficientMisunderstoodBefore And After
Book:The English Poets Lessing: Rousseau
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“Our imagination so magnifies this present existence, by the power of continual reflection on it, and so attenuates eternity, by not thinking of it at all, that we reduce an eternity to nothingness, and expand a mere nothing to an eternity; and this habit is so inveterately rooted in us that all the force of reason cannot induce us to lay it aside.”

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Book:Thoughts on Religion and Other Subjects
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“A child with an intense capacity for feeling can suffer to a degree that is beyond any degree of adult suffering, because imagination, ignorance, and the conviction of utter helplessness are untempered either by reason or by experience.”

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Book:Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated)
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“By directing our sentiments, passions, and reason toward the common human plight, imagination grants us the advantages of a moralexistence. What we surrender of innocent love of self is exchanged for the safeties and pleasures of belonging to a larger whole. We are born dependent, but only imagination can bind our passions to other human beings.”

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Book:Adolescence: The Farewell to Childhood
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“It is unwise to equate scientific activity with what we call reason, poetic activity with what we call imagination. Without the imaginative leap from facts to generalisation, no theoretic discovery in science is made. The poet, on the other hand, must not imagine but reason--that is to say, he must exercise a great deal of consciously directed thought in the selection and rejection of his data: there is a technical logic, a poetic reasoning in his choice of the words, rhythms and images by which a poem's coherence is achieved.”

MadeReasonFactsHandsSciencePoetryChoicesImaginationDealsImaginePoetExerciseActivityDiscoveryLogicRhythmDataRejectionReasoningPoeticLeapSelectionImaginativeUnwiseCoherenceDiscovery In ScienceGeneralisation
Author:Cecil Day-Lewis
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“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”

IfsWellsChildrenMatterReasonActionProcessImaginationPrinciplesDevelopmentHigherBehaviorIntellectualDirectIllMechanismPrimitiveIncentivesGratificationDischargeGuiding PrinciplesDirect ActionIntellectual DevelopmentImmediate Gratification
Book:The Magic Years: Understanding and Handling the Problems of Early Childhood
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“Although no definite reason for the accident has been established, modifications are being embodied to cover every possibility that imagination has suggested as a likely cause of the disaster. When these modifications are completed and have been satisfactorily flight tested, the Board sees no reason why passenger services should not be resumed.”

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Author:John Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara
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“One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.”

MenWorldReasonPurposeHumanityCommunityImaginationLossQualityTroubleGroupsBalanceRoseLegsOperationsStreamsRabbitsCompetenceChatterBeaversSagacity
Book:Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself
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“That's grossing money for other people that has a multiplying factor, but the government doesn't see that. It doesn't see that making a film or culture or art is part of our economy. But the main reason is this, it's part of our identity. I think cinema is the memory and the imagination of the country. Take the memory and imagination out of an individual and he's stops being an individual.”

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Author:Philippe Falardeau
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“I've carried on, in that same tradition, with my kids. Aside from just his brilliance, in my estimation, I think he had one of the great imaginations of the 20th century. One of the reasons why the tradition carries on, all these years later, is because, as a parent, those are the books that you go to and pull off the shelf because they never stop delighting you.”

ThinkingYearsBookReasonKidsParentImaginationCenturyTraditionReason WhyCarrieShelves20th CenturyBrillianceEstimationGreat Imagination
Author:Christopher Meledandri
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