Mental Processes

"It is by imagining what we truly desire that we begin to go there. That is the kind of thinking about the future that seems to me most fruitful, most rewarding."

"May I free myself from the ever-pressing chest and enter the garden of imagination by leisurely hiding brain on hill summits."

"Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative."

"The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being."

"The true function of logic,... as applied to matters of experience,... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is."

"I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me."

"Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind."

"This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone."

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will."

"In my mind's eye, Horatio."

"This is the very coinage of your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy."

"This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of occasion."

"The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact."

"And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name."

"The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them."

"Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it To lie that way thou go'st, not whence thou com'st: Suppose the singing birds musicians; The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strew'd; The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no more Than a delightful measure or a dance."

"When people tilt their heads just slightly to imagine another person's experience, the space inside the mind grows."

"Two things of opposite natures seem to depend On one another, as a man depends On a woman, day on night, the imaginedOn the real. This is the origin of change."

"The imagination loses vitality as it ceases to adhere to what is real. When it adheres to the unreal and intensifies what is unreal, while its first effect may be extraordinary, that effect is the maximum effect that it will ever have."

"The operation of the imagination in life is more significant than its operation in or in relation to works of art... in life what is important is the truth as it is, while in arts and letters what is important is truth as we see it."

"The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos."

"The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them. If this is true, then reason is simply the methodizer of the imagination."

"Men feel that the imagination is the next greatest power to faith: the reigning prince."

"The imagination is one of the forces of nature."

"An uncommon degree of imagination constitutes poetical genius; a talent which, although chiefly displayed in poetical composition, is also the foundation (though not precisely in the same manner) of various other arts."

"Science will reach maturity when the brain can realize as quickly as it can imagine! Then problems will be—just to Imagine!"

"Conflict acting on intelligence creates imagination. Faced with conflict, creatures are forced to imagine what will happen, where the next threat will come from. If there has never been conflict, imagination never develops. Wits arise in answer to danger, to pain, to tragedy. No one ever got smarter eating easy apples."

"[H]ow are mathematical activities like game-playing...? ...One makes sense of narrative, whether fictional or factual, by a mental construction that is sometimes called the world of story ...[which] may be the real world at some other time or right now in some other place, one sees that the imaginative effort is a standard way of understanding what people say... In order to understand connected speech about concrete things, one imagines them. This is as obvious as it is unclear how we do it. ...I imagine myself in those circumstances and ask myself what I can see. Pretending to be in those circumstances does not conflict with my certain knowledge that on the contrary I am listening to the news on my radio at home. The capacity to do this... encourages empathy, but it also allows one to do mathematics. ...This is often fun, and it is a form of playing with ideas."

"This world is but canvas to our imaginations."

"You do not chop off a section of your imaginative substance and make a book specifically for children, for — if you are honest — you have no idea where childhood ends and maturity begins. It is all endless and all one."

"Henceforth play is such that the explanation for it must always be that it is the imaginary, illusory realization of unrealizable desires. Imagination is a new formation that is not present in the consciousness of the very young child, is totally absent in animals, and represents a specifically human form of conscious activity. Like all functions of consciousness, it originally arises from action. The old adage that children’s play is imagination in action can be reversed: we can say that imagination in adolescents and schoolchildren is play without action."

"There is no life I know that compares to pure imagination Living there you'll be free if you truly wish to be"

"Imagination was the key (as John Lennon was to claim, in a song too often misjudged as simpleminded)."

"Thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!"

"And castels buylt above in lofty skies, Which never yet had good foundation."

"Es ist nichts fürchterlicher als Einbildungskraft ohne Geschmack."

"Build castles in Spain."

"Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap In imperceptible water."

"Delphinum appingit sylvis, in fluctibus aprum."

"Celui qui a de l'imagination sans érudition a des ailes, et n'a pas de pieds."

"These are the gloomy comparisons of a disturbed imagination; the melancholy madness of poetry, without the inspiration."

"When I could not sleep for cold I had fire enough in my brain, And builded with roofs of gold My beautiful castles in Spain!"

"C'est l'imagination qui gouverne le genre humain."

"Castles in Spain."

"It is only in France that one builds castles in Spain."

"I build nought els but castles in the ayre."

"But thou, that did'st appear so fair To fond imagination, Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate creation."

"An active imagination may find a bad tendency arising out of every transaction between imperfect morals."

"The power of imagination, of image, which is the fundamental power of literature, is the power to determine a people’s fate."

"creativity is not the monopoly of the Shakespeares and Einsteins of this world. There is a science of intelligent living, an art of being fully human, in which we all can and ought to be creative. To use our imagination is part of the total art of being. To imagine other people's imagination is part of the art of being with others."