An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON IMAGINATION
The man who has no imagination has no wings.
Muhammad Ali (1942-, American boxer)
When you stop having dreams and ideals -- well, you might as well stop altogether.
Marian Anderson (1902-1993, American contralto concert and opera singer)
Act as if you have already achieved your goal and it is yours.
Dr. Robert Anthony (American educator)
Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.
Lauren Bacall (1924-, American actress)
To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, He said, "you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived."
Richard Bach (1936-, American author)
Man is an imagining being.
Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962, French scientist, philosopher, literary theorist)
It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations.
Walter Bagehot (1826-1977, British economist, critic)
The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887, American preacher, orator, writer)
Sentiment is the ripened fruit of fantasy.
Madame Belazy
Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the prevailing famine of substance.
E. T. Bell
The human imagination... has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy. It dreams, like a dog in its basket, of hares in the open.
John Berger (1926-, British actor, critic)
If you close your eyes, you could just as well imagine me to be vintage Ali MacGraw, circa 1968.
Sandra Bernhard (1955-, American actress)
The way we imagine ourselves to appear to another person is an essential element in our conception of ourselves. In other words, I am not what I think I am, and I am not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am.
Robert Bierstedt
To me, this world is all one continued vision of fancy or imagination, and I feel flattered when I am told so. What is it sets Homer, Virgil and Milton in so high a rank of art? Why is the Bible more entertaining and instructive than any other book? Is it not because they are addressed to the imagination, which is spiritual sensation, and but immediately to the understanding or reason?
William Blake (1757-1827, British poet, painter)
What is now proved was once only imagined.
William Blake (1757-1827, British poet, painter)
Imagination rules the world.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821, French general, emperor)
The human race is governed by its imagination.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821, French general, emperor)
To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery -- even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness -- is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.
Andre Breton (1989-1966, French surrealist)
The bridges that you cross before you come to them are over rivers that aren't there.
Gene Brown
Live out of your imagination instead of out of your memory.
Les Brown (1945-, American speaker, author, trainer, motivator,)
Fortunately, somewhere between chance and mystery lies imagination, the only thing that protects our freedom, despite the fact that people keep trying to reduce it or kill it off altogether.
Luis Bunuel (1900-1983, Spanish film director)
The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.
Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929, American sociologist)
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, Polish-born British novelist)
Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881, Scottish philosopher, author)
Not our logical faculty, but our imaginative one is king over us. I might say, priest and prophet to lead us heavenward, or magician and wizard to lead us hellward.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881, Scottish philosopher, author)
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964, American marine biologist, author)
People can die of mere imagination.
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400, British poet)
Make every thought, every fact, that comes into your mind pay you a profit. Make it work and produce for you. Think of things not as they are but as they might be. Don't merely dream -- but create!
Robert Collier (1885-1950, American writer, publisher)
Pictures help you to form the mental mould...
Robert Collier (1885-1950, American writer, publisher)
Pictures help you to form the mental mould...
Robert Collier (1885-1950, American writer, publisher)
See the things you want as already yours. Think of them as yours, as belonging to you, as already in your possession.
Robert Collier (1885-1950, American writer, publisher)
Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blue print, and begin to build.
Robert Collier (1885-1950, American writer, publisher)
Your imagination has much to do with your life.... It is for you to decide how you want your imagination to serve you.
Philip Conley
I think my securities far outweigh my insecurities. I am not nearly as afraid of myself and my imagination as I used to be.
Billy Connelly
Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.
Joseph Conrad (1857-1924, Polish-born British novelist)
Death is the tyrant of the imagination.
Barry Cornwall
When the imagination and will power are in conflict, are antagonistic, it is always the imagination which wins, without any exception.
Emile Coue (1857-1926, French pharmacist, hypnotist, pioneer)
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen R. Covey (1932-, American speaker, trainer, author of "The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People")
We are what and where we are because we have first imagined it.
Donald Curtis
The mind must see visual achievement of the purpose before action is initiated.
Mack R. Douglas
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931, American inventor, founder of GE)
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
In that way, imagination and intelligence enter into our existence in the part of servants of the primary instincts.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
The most evident difference springs from the important part which is played in man by a relatively strong power of imagination and by the capacity to think, aided as it is by language and other symbolic devices.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)
Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Science does not know its debt to imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrate to some stroke of the imagination.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
We live by our imagination, our admiration s, and our sentiments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Hold a picture of yourself long and steadily enough in your mind's eye and you will be drawn toward it. Picture yourself vividly as winning and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success. Great living starts with a picture, held in your imagination, of what you would like to do or be.
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969, American minister)
Picture yourself vividly as winning, and the alone will contribute immeasurably to success.
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969, American minister)
Image creates desire. You will what you imagine.
J. G. Gallimore
Peak performers develop powerful mental images of the behavior that will lead to the desired results. They see in their mind's eye the result they want, and the actions leading to it.
Charles A. Garfield (American peak performance expert, researcher, trainer)
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
Jules de Gaultier
There is nothing more frightful than imagination without taste.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
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 (1929-, American author)
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.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970, American speaker, author, "Think And Grow Rich")
Our minds become magnetized with the dominating thoughts we hold in our minds and these magnets attract to us the forces, the people, the circumstances of life which harmonize with the nature of our dominating thoughts.
Napoleon Hill (1883-1970, American speaker, author, "Think And Grow Rich")
Imagination is the eye of the soul.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824, French moralist)
One who has imagination without learning has wings without feet.
Joseph Joubert (1754-1824, French moralist)
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784, British author)
All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to deprecate imagination.
Carl Jung (1875-1961, Swiss psychiatrist)
The future is simply infinite possibility waiting to happen. What it waits on is human imagination to crystallize its possibility.
Leland Kaiser
My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.
John Keats (1795-1821, British poet)
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958, American engineer, inventor)
Ideas shape the course of history.
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946, British economist)
Soft focus is an important skill that can effect us metaphorically. In other words, the way we see the future has everything to do with how well we can look up and see the expanded horizon before us.
Peter Kline (American peak performance expert)
Fertility of mind is not what gives us with so many resources on the same matter. In fact, It is the lack of good discernment that makes us hesitate at each thing our imagination presents, and hinders us from at first discerning which is the best.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
Imagination does not enable us to invent as many different contradictions as there are by nature in every heart.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.
George Meredith (1828-1909, British author)
Begin to imagine what the desirable outcome would be like. Go over these mental pictures and delineate details and refinements. Play them over and over to yourself.
Maxwell Maltz (1944-, Canadian-born American plastic surgeon, author of "Psycho-Cybernetics")
For imagination sets the goal "picture" which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of "will," as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.
Maxwell Maltz (1944-, Canadian-born American plastic surgeon, author of "Psycho-Cybernetics")
Study the situation thoroughly, go over in your imagination the various courses of action possible to you and the consequences which can and may follow from each course. Pick out the course which gives the most promise and go ahead.
Maxwell Maltz (1944-, Canadian-born American plastic surgeon, author of "Psycho-Cybernetics")
Thus man of all creatures is more than a creature, he is also a creator. Man alone can direct his success mechanism by the use of imagination, or imaging ability.
Maxwell Maltz (1944-, Canadian-born American plastic surgeon, author of "Psycho-Cybernetics")
When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative "success mechanism" within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or "willpower."
Maxwell Maltz (1944-, Canadian-born American plastic surgeon, author of "Psycho-Cybernetics")
Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.
Paul McCartney (1942-, British popstar, composer, songwriter, member of the "Beatles")
We have been endowed with the capacity and the power to create desirable pictures within and to find them automatically in the outer world of our environment.
John McDonald
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. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956, American editor, author, critic, humorist)
My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592, French philosopher, essayist)
Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592, French philosopher, essayist)
You must first clearly see a thing in your mind before you can do it.
Alex Morrison
Imagination, the supreme delight of the immortal and the immature, should be limited. In order to enjoy life, we should not enjoy it too much.
Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977, Russian-born American novelist, poet)
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727, British scientist, mathematician)
It takes as much imagination to create debt as to create income.
Leonard Orr
Imagination decides everything.
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662, French scientist, religious philosopher)
It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and is it not true, that, as children, we were imaginative?
Cesare Pavese (1908-1950, Italian poet, novelist, translator)
Imagination is the true magic carpet.
Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993, American Christian reformed pastor, speaker, author)
Everything you can imagine is real.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973, Spanish artist)
It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1845, American poet, critic, short-story writer)
Every head is a world.
Cuban Proverb (Sayings of Cuban origin)
I have discovered that people with money have no imagination, and people with imagination have no money.
George Weiss Rainbow (1940-, British eccentric)
The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized.
Mary Caroline Richards
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778, Swiss political philosopher, educationist, essayist)
We can gradually grow into any condition we desire, provided we first make ourselves in habitual mental attitude the person who corresponds to those conditions.
Thomas Troward
Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
It is eminently a weariable faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
The imagination is never governed, it is always the ruling and divine power.
John Ruskin (1819-1900, British critic, social theorist)
How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we emulate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.
Marquis De Sade (1740-1814, French author)
The imagination is the spur of delights... all depends upon it, it is the mainspring of everything; now, is it not by means of the imagination one knows joy? Is it not of the imagination that the sharpest pleasures arise?
Marquis De Sade (1740-1814, French author)
Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.
Robert H. Schuller (1926-, American minister, author, social leader)
The entrepreneur is essentially a visualizer and an actualizer. He can visualize something, and when visualizes it he sees exactly how to make it happen.
Robert L Schwartz
Imagination... its limits are only those of the mind itself.
Rod Serling (1924-1975, American television script-writer)
People often get their imagination's mixed up with their memories.
P.K. Shaw
The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822, British poet)
I don't dream at night; I dream all day. I dream for a living.
Steven Spielberg (1947-, American director, screenwriter)
We are told never to cross a bridge till we come to it, but this world is owned by men who have "crossed bridges" in their imagination far ahead of the crowd.
Author Unknown
The imagination is man's power over nature.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955, American poet)
To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind.
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955, American poet)
Your imaginings can have as much power over you as your reality, or even more.
Charles T. Tart
Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop. The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way.
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943, Croatian physicist and electrical engineer)
I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862, American essayist, poet, naturalist)
Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination.
Author Unknown
Great living starts with a picture held in the imagination, of what you would like to do or be.
Author Unknown
If you clearly and vividly IMAGINE yourself in the first person doing, being, having the things and qualities you truly want... then you will be using positive imagination to begin a change to fulfilling that image.
Author Unknown
Imagination gallops; judgment merely walks.
Author Unknown
Imagination is the pontoon bridge making way for the timid feet of reason.
Author Unknown
It is important to rely on your imagination for your sense of humor and your memory for your truths. Not the other way around.
Author Unknown
You must pre-live the future... not re-live the past... and savor the moment.
Author Unknown
Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.
Jules Verne (1828-1905, French writer)
Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.
Stephen Vizinczey (1933-, Hungarian novelist, critic)
We are what we imagine ourselves to be.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-, American novelist)
Understand that you, yourself, are no more than the composite picture of all your thoughts and actions. In your relationships with others, remember the basic and critically important rule: If you want to be loved, be lovable. If you want respect, set a respectable example!
Denis Waitley (1933-, American author, speaker, trainer, peak performance expert) Author's website: www.deniswaitley.com
You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization.
Denis Waitley (1933-, American author, speaker, trainer, peak performance expert) Author's website: www.deniswaitley.com
If you can imagine it, you can achieve it; if you can dream it, you can become it.
William A. Ward
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our life.
Simone Weil (1910-1943, French philosopher, mystic)
Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.
Simone Weil (1910-1943, French philosopher, mystic)
What you see is what you get.
Flip Wilson (1933-, American actor, comedian)
An idea is salvation by imagination.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959, American architect)
First have being in your mind. Make real in your mind then bring that being into reality. The genius is he who sees what is not yet and causes it to come to be.
Peter Nivio Zarlenga (American businessman, founder of Blockbuster Videos)
The Chinese pianist Liu Chi Kung was imprisoned for seven years during the Cultural Revolution, during which time he had no access to a piano. When he returned to giving concerts again after he was released, his playing was better than ever. Asked how this was possible since he had not practice for seven years, he replied: "I did practice, every day. I rehearsed every piece I had ever played, note by note, in my mind."
Bernie Zilbergeld
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