Beyond Realism | 102 Amazing Quotes About Imagination
Imagination, also called the faculty of imagining, is the creative ability to form ideas, images, and sensations in the mind without any immediate input of the senses, such as seeing or hearing. Imagination helps make knowledge applicable in solving problems and is fundamental to integrating experience and the learning process. It is behind every technological innovation, every constitution, every architectural monument, every scientific discovery, every act of creativity, every movie, book, symphony or poem.
Pure imagination is the ability to change reality within the realm of thoughts and ideas. A child can imagine places that they have never been. A child can play with toys and friends made up only from the fabric of the mind. Applied imagination, however, involves changing the physical world. Creation, invention and exploration are all inspired by imagination of things not currently real: a painting, story, mathematical theorem or new device, which does not exist at one moment and then at some later moment it does. It also includes those things that are still just potential; imagined, but as yet unrealized. The following quotes will spark your imagination and help you experience life on a new level.
Table of Contents
- Short Quotes about Imagination
- Funny quotes about imagination
- Motivational quotes about imagination
- Cynical quotes about imagination
- Insightful quotes about imagination
- Intellectual quotes about imagination
- Poetic quotes about imagination
Short Quotes about Imagination
- Imagination creates reality. Richard Wagner
- Everything you can imagine is real. Pablo Picasso
- Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere. Albert Einstein
- Poetry = Anger x Imagination Sherman Alexie, One Stick Song
- Imagination governs the world. Napoléon Bonaparte
- Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. Jonathan Swift
- An idea is salvation by imagination. Frank Lloyd Wright
- Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. John Lennon
- Hate is a lack of imagination. Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory
- A book is a device to ignite the imagination. Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
- Truth is a matter of the imagination. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
- Imagination is the true magic carpet. Norman Vincent Peale
- What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. Sylvia Plath
- Reality is for people that lack imagination. Hayao Miyazaki
- Imagination is the soil that brings dreams to life. Anonymous
- True change takes place in the imagination. Thomas Moore
- The most beautiful world is always entered through imagination.
- Intelligence is composed mostly of imagination, insight, things that have nothing to do with reason. Vivienne Westwood
Funny quotes about imagination
- Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. Oscar Wilde
- Reason is intelligence taking exercise. Imagination is intelligence with an erection. Victor Hugo
- My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day. John Steinbeck, East of Eden
- Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination. Marcel Proust, The Captive & The Fugitive
- I don’t have a dirty mind. I have a sexy imagination.
- Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye. Bill Hicks
- The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot. André Breton
- My imagination is something of a badass. D.C. Pierson, The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To
- I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night
- I have too much imagination to be a housewife. Marilyn Monroe
- Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting one in a fruit salad. Imagination is putting one in a fruit salad, adding a little feta and mint and serving it in a watermelon carved to look like Carmen Miranda. Tiffany Fox
Motivational quotes about imagination
- Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. Jamie Paolinetti
- The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment. Tony Robbins
- Imagination and creativity can change the world. Anonymous
- If you can dream it, you can do it. Walt Disney
- Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, and live the life you have imagined. Henry David Thoreau
- Imagination means nothing without doing. Charlie Chaplin
- The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got. Philip José Farmer
- Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. W. Clement Stone
- Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create. Maria Montessori
- Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning. Gloria Steinem
- Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. Albert Einstein
- Because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worthwhile. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
- Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere. Carl Sagan
- Love what you do and do what you love. Don’t listen to anyone else who tells you not to do it. You do what you want, what you love. Imagination should be the center of your life. Ray Bradbury
- What is now proved was once only imagined. William Blake
- Imagination is a place where all the important answers live. Joe Meno
- To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything. Anatole France
- If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it. William Arthur Ward
- A daily dose of daydreaming heals the heart, soothes the soul, and strengthens the imagination. Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
- Those who fear the imagination condemn it: something childish, they say, something monsterish, misbegotten. Not all of us dream awake. But those of us who do have no choice. Patricia A. McKillip
- Live out of your imagination, not your history. Stephen R. Covey
- When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do. RuPaul
- Imagination is a gift given to us from God and each one of us use it differently. Brian Jacques
- Laughter is timeless, imagination has no age and dreams are forever. Walt Disney
- The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. Albert Einstein
- Imagination should be used, not to escape reality, but to create it. Colin Wilson
Cynical quotes about imagination
- My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people. Patricia Highsmith
- Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality. Lewis Carroll
- A blank piece of paper is God’s way of telling us how hard it is to be God. Sidney Sheldon
- Imagination is an instrument of survival. Rogier Van Der Heide
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- Reality can be beaten with enough imagination. Mark Twain
- The cost of oblivious daydreaming was always this moment of return, the realignment with what had been before and now seemed a little worse. Ian McEwan, Atonement
- And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that. Stephen King
- The basis of action is lack of imagination. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream. Oscar Wilde
- I think nature’s imagination Is so much greater than man’s, she’s never going to let us relax. Richard Feynman
- Some might think that the creativity, imagination, and flights of fancy that give my life meaning are insanity. Vladimir Nabokov
Insightful quotes about imagination
- Imagination is the power of the mind over the possibilities of things. William Stevens
- You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
- Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. Francis Bacon
- I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination. John Keats
- Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon. Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty
- Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to imagine everything. Henry Miller, Sexus
- Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one. Terry Pratchett
- Indeed, the human mind appeared to suffer from a crippling need to fabricate in the absence of concrete proof. J.R. Ward, Lover Mine
- Worry is a misuse of imagination. Dan Zadra
- You must close your eyes, otherwise you won’t see anything. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
- Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination. Immanuel Kant
- We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality. Seneca
Intellectual quotes about imagination
- Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will. George Bernard Shaw
- I believe in intuition and inspiration. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research. Albert Einstein, On Cosmic Religion and Other Opinions and Aphorisms
- I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen. J.G. Ballard
- 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. William Blake
- Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared. J.K. Rowling
- If something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn’t there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That’s why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones. Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
- If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.
Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark - Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
- When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it – or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don’t suppose many people try to do it. Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Poetic quotes about imagination
- Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king. Mark Van Doren
- The world is but a canvas to the imagination. Henry David Thoreau
- The power of imagination makes us infinite. John Muir
- The possible’s slow fuse is lit by the Imagination. Emily Dickinson
- Imagination is the highest kite that can fly. Lauren Bacall, By Myself and Then Some
- Our imagination flies ― we are its shadow on the earth. Vladimir Nabokov
- There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. G.K. Chesterton
- Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist
- Imagination is the golden-eyed monster that never sleeps. It must be fed; it cannot be ignored. Patricia A. McKillip
- Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out. Criss Jami
- It’s strange how dreams get under your skin and give your heart a test for what’s real and what’s imaginary. Jason Mraz
- The man who has no imagination has no wings. Muhammad Ali
- My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it. Ursula K. Le Guin
- You may think I’m small, but I have a universe inside my mind. Yoko Ono
- My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk. John Keats
- So rapid is the flight of dreams upon the wings of imagination. Alexandre Dumas
- Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on. Joe Hill, NOS4A2
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