Motivational Quotes

Imagination

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.

- Stevens, Wallace

Best Quotes about Imagination

Imagination is not a talent of some people but is the health of everyone.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

When you stop having dreams and ideals -- well, you might as well stop altogether.

Anderson, Marian

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?

Blake, William

Death is the tyrant of the imagination.

Cornwall, Barry

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.

Zarlenga, Peter Nivio

The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none over for works of imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment. I asked for bread and was given a tranquilizer. It is important to recognize that in our time man has not written one word, thought one thought, put two notes or two bricks together, splashed color on to canvas or concrete into space, in a manner which will be of any conceivable imaginative interest to posterity.

Muggeridge, Malcolm

Reason can answer questions, but imagination has to ask them.

Gerard, Ralph

The great successful men of the world have used their imaginations... they think ahead and create their mental picture, and the go to work materializing that picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building -- steadily building.

Collier, Robert

You cannot depend on your judgments when your imagination is out of focus.

Twain, Mark

10.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

Jung, Carl

11.

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.

Tesla, Nikola

12.

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.

Stevens, Wallace

13.

The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.

Hill, Napoleon

14.

If you close your eyes, you could just as well imagine me to be vintage Ali MacGraw, circa 1968.

Bernhard, Sandra

15.

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.

Fosdick, Harry Emerson

16.

I noticed an almost universal trait among Super Achievers, and it was what I call Sensory Goal Vision. These people knew what they wanted out of life, and they could sense it multidimensionally before they ever had it. They could not only see it, but also taste it, smell it, and imagine the sounds and emotions associated with it. They pre-lived it before they had it. And the sharp, sensory vision became a powerful driving force in their lives.

Devore, Stephen

17.

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.

Newton, Sir Isaac

18.

Act as if you have already achieved your goal and it is yours.

Anthony, Dr. Robert

19.

The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.

Kettering, Charles F.

20.

Often it is just lack of imagination that keeps a man from suffering very much.

Proust, Marcel

21.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

Einstein, Albert

22.

See the things you want as already yours. Think of them as yours, as belonging to you, as already in your possession.

Collier, Robert

23.

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.

Bell, E. T.

24.

Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.

Verne, Jules

25.

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.

Bunuel, Luis

26.

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.

Bierstedt, Robert

27.

Some people have just enough imagination to spoil their judgment.

Mallory, Paul

28.

Capability means imagination...

Hill, Napoleon

29.

We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

30.

Let your imagination release your imprisoned possibilities.

Schuller, Robert H.

31.

People can die of mere imagination.

Chaucer, Geoffrey

32.

The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized.

Richards, Mary Caroline

33.

Imagination is a quality given a man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

Wilde, Oscar

34.

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 relevetory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

J.K. Rowling

35.

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.

Ruskin, John

36.

By going over your day in imagination before you begin it, you can begin acting successfully at any moment.

Brande, Dorothea

37.

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.

Zilbergeld, Bernie

38.

Celebrate what you want to see more of.

Peters, Thomas J.

39.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it. Try the as if technique.

James, William

40.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Covey, Stephen R.

41.

I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. First I see the ball where I want it to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I see the ball going there: its path, trajectory, and shape, even its behavior on landing. Then there is a sort of fade-out, and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.

Nicklaus, Jack

42.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

Ruskin, John

43.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

45.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our life.

Weil, Simone

46.

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.

Conrad, Joseph

47.

It takes as much imagination to create debt as to create income.

Orr, Leonard

48.

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.

Garfield, Charles A.

49.

Imagination disposes of everything; it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which is everything in this world.

Pascal, Blaise

50.

Imagination... its limits are only those of the mind itself.

Serling, Rod