Imagination Quotes

I do a lot of curiosity buying I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination. I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I'll buy whatever catches my attention.
– Bruce Springsteen
I didn't have the equipment for the regular world of being a lawyer. I didn't have the imagination for that. I did have a funny kind of ambition, but I didn't know where to put it.
– Michael Lindsay-Hogg
I definitely gravitate towards quality genre projects and genre of any kind whether it's science fiction, horror or really anything. I'm just drawn to quality. I don't think 'Darkness Falls' is horror there isn't any gore by any stretch of the imagination.
– Emma Caulfield
I deeply adored my mum. She was an extraordinary person, even for the prejudice I'm likely to have. She was beautiful, amusing, a tremendous elaborator of things into comic proportions and extravagant in her imagination.
– Andrew Motion
I certainly know there are people in positions of power in the business who lack imagination and, perhaps as a result of that, think of me as 'David'. But I wouldn't really want to work with those people, you know?
– Michael C. Hall
I can't work completely out of my imagination. I must put my foot in a bit of truth and then I can fly free.
– Andrew Wyeth
I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?
– Jane Campion
I believed in myself. I never imagined myself as just an ordinary player.
– Imran Khan
I believe that imagination inspires nations. It's something that I live by.
– Janelle Monae
I believe in imagination. I did Kramer vs. Kramer before I had children. But the mother I would be was already inside me.
– Meryl Streep
I am not interested in slice of life, what I want is a slice of the imagination.
– Carlos Fuentes
I am better able to imagine hell than heaven it is my inheritance, I suppose.
– Elinor Wylie
I am an actor and I live in the world of pretend in my working capacity. I live in the world of my imagination.
– Derek Jacobi
I always won in my imagination. I always hit the game-winning shot, or I hit the free throw. Or if I missed, there was a lane violation, and I was given another one.
– Mike Krzyzewski
I always wanted to ride a dragon myself, so I decided to do this for a year in my imagination.
– Cornelia Funke
I always know exactly where my stories take place, which gives me something certain so I can use my imagination for the other stuff. I worry though, who wants to keep reading stories about Kalamazoo?
– Bonnie Jo Campbell
I always imagined I could be what I wanted to be.
– Chris Brown
I always believe it's better to have 30 imaginations working on a project, rather than one imagination telling the other 29 what to do.
– Trevor Nunn
However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.
– J. K. Rowling
How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.
– Nellie Bly
His imagination conceived and bore - worlds but nothing in these worlds became alive until he discovered its true and living name. The name was the breath of life and, sooner or later, he invariably found it.
– Algernon H. Blackwood
Heaven knows, I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.
– Judith Krantz
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
– Joseph Joubert
He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.
– Washington Irving
He brought imagination to the story of the Creation.
– Harvey Keitel
Growing up, I didn't have a lot of toys, and personal entertainment depended on individual ingenuity and imagination - think up a story and go live it for an afternoon.
– Terry Brooks
Grandchildren have taught me how important the future is. I try to look through their eyes and envision what's in their imagination. What's the world going to look like when they're my age? That really does take a huge imagination.
– Richard Lugar
Ghost stories really scare me. I have such a big imagination that after I watch a horror movie like 'The Grudge', I look in the corners of my room for the next two days.
– Vanessa Hudgens
George has only got to ring me. His imagination is so wonderful, I'd do any character he might create.
– Peter Mayhew
Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.
– Henry David Thoreau
Further, for once, I like the idea that people who think I'm a constant voice for the furthering of the imagination have to see that interest in a more materialistic fashion.
– Peter Sotos
Free imagination is the inestimable prerogative of youth and it must be cherished and guarded as a treasure.
– Felix Bloch
Free enterprise empowers entrepreneurs who have ideas and imagination, investors who take risks, and workers who hone their skills and offer their labor.
– Paul Ryan
For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For someone who writes fiction, in order to activate the imagination and the unconscious, it's essential to be free.
– Manuel Puig
For some reason I can't explain, artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music, you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.
– Joshua Bell
For me, my travels have been the chance to go to a place that already exists in my imagination.
– Hugo Pratt
Fools act on imagination without knowledge, pedants act on knowledge without imagination.
– Alfred North Whitehead
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
Fantasy mirrors desire. Imagination reshapes it.
– Mason Cooley
Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination - they don't conform to the reality that's around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress.
– Kate Atkinson
Everything, I think, about acting is based on imagination.
– Christina Ricci
Every view, and every object I studied attentively, by viewing them again and again on every side, for I was anxious to make a lasting impression of it on my imagination.
– Karl Philipp Moritz
Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.
– Ron Perlman
Every day the eye is subject to a thousand tiny shocks as a thousand industries compete for the eye-kick, the visual hook that will lock the consumer into product for that crucial second where the tiny - or not so tiny - leap of the imagination is made.
– Graham Joyce
Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin.
– William Robertson Smith
Essentially, I'm untrained, so I just go with my imagination and try to put myself as solidly as I can into the shoes of whatever person I'm going to be playing.
– Christian Bale
Ellis Peters's historical detail is very accurate and very minute, and therefore is not only interesting to read but good for an actor to acquire a sense of the period. And the other thing I think is that an actor lives in the land of imagination.
– Derek Jacobi
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.
– Frederick Henry Hedge
Dr. Einstein was not successful in school, but he found something in the air from his own imagination and his own brain power, and look what he did.
– Eartha Kitt
Don Quixote's misfortune is not his imagination, but Sancho Panza.
– Franz Kafka
Doing 'White Collar,' quite often my character goes undercover, so therein lies the compounding of the imagination. I get to play Peter Burke and then someone else when Peter Burke goes undercover.
– Tim DeKay
Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
– Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Cynicism and naivety lie cheek by jowl in the American imagination if the United States is one of the most venal nations on Earth, it is also one of the most earnestly idealistic.
– Terry Eagleton
Cooking with kids is not just about ingredients, recipes, and cooking. It's about harnessing imagination, empowerment, and creativity.
– Guy Fieri
Classical plays require more imagination and more general training to be able to do. That's why I like playing Shakespeare better than anything else.
– Vivien Leigh
Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.
– R. D. Laing
Charles Laughton, who's a great hero of mine, only ever made one film and it happens to be one of the great films ever, which is 'The Night of the Hunter.' It's full of his kind of imagination and creation and how you do things and just in the way he used the studio, I just thought it was a fantastical way of using the studio.
– Brian Cox
Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?
– Sun Tzu
But who can paint like Nature? Can imagination boast, amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
– James Thomson
But there is so much more to do for the city we love... a Dallas with roads as strong as our businesses, parks as beautiful as our children, a downtown as tall as our imagination.
– Laura Miller
But the greatest thing about music is putting it out there for people to figure out. You want the listener to find the song on their own. If you give too much away, it takes away from the imagination.
– Diana Krall
But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.
– Roger McGuinn
But in a 24-hour day, the 25th hour is also the impossible hour, an hour that doesn't exist, that can only be created by the imagination.
– David Benioff
But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I'm kind of fascist with myself, you know. There's no discussion. There is an order. You follow it.
– Karl Lagerfeld
But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.
– Abel Ferrara
Busted is not the ideal band I'd like to be in by any stretch of the imagination.
– Charlie Simpson
Being an actor in movies is a lot about the power of your imagination and making the circumstance real to you so the audience will feel that it's real.
– Joel Kinnaman
Because of my faith and my imagination, I was able to enjoy my childhood, even though it was tough.
– Donna Brazile
Be drawn to the visual arts for it can expand your imagination.
– Barbara Januszkiewicz
As an actor you have to have a strong vivid imagination as you're working and when the camera's rolling, but there's certainly a part of you that is aware of real life, that you're making a movie.
– John Hawkes
As an actor I think sometimes producers need a little bit of encouragement to see you in a particular role, they may not have as much imagination as you would expect.
– Steve Kanaly
Anyone who lives within his means suffers from a lack of imagination.
– Lionel Stander
Another side to me is this very sexual being. When I look back on my life, it's always been there. It's been there since I was 10 years old, having the imagination that I had.
– Janet Jackson
And, as I have said, it's made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo said of his voices that they were like his own mental powers multiplied by five.
– James Merrill
An idea is salvation by imagination.
– Frank Lloyd Wright
Although I do not have a family, I have eyes, ears and imagination, and know, as most people know, that the importance of one's children is paramount.
– Lara St. John
Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days, he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.
– Bob Kane
All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
– Carl Jung
All the best have something in common, a regard for reality, an agreement to its primacy over the imagination.
– Wislawa Szymborska
All my life I've had the privilege to make my living with my imagination, and the most important thing has been to see my creative life grow. I was educated to do that and have lived accordingly.
– Tommy Lee Jones
A young imagination is bold, likes to make bigger leaps. It likes to, well, imagine that the dustbuster is a dinosaur that the computer mouse is a hotrod that the box is a cave that the rawhide is a torch... or a baton... or something.
– Mo Rocca
A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.
– Vladimir Nabokov
A place makes a deep impression on you when you're young. It lives with you. It's like your childhood. It fertilises the imagination.
– Richard Eyre
A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
– William Hazlitt
A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.
– Charles M. Schwab
A lady's imagination is very rapid it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.
– Jane Austen
A great wind is blowing, and that gives you either imagination or a headache.
– Catherine the Great
A child who has never fantasized about having other parents is seriously lacking in imagination.
– Fred G. Gosman
A certificate of live birth is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination as a birth certificate.
– Donald Trump
'Castle' is a guy living in a fantasy world. He's in his imagination, writing these stories of murder.
– Nathan Fillion
'Avatar' is the greatest, most comprehensive collection of movie cliches ever assembled, but it's put together in a brand new way with a new technology, and tremendous imagination, making it a true epic and a kind of a milestone.
– Joe Dante
Fact is not to be worshipped. The life which is devoid of imagination is dead; it is tied to the earth. There need be no divorce of fact and fancy; they are only the poles of experience. What is called the scientific method is only imagination set within bounds. Facts are bridged by imagination. They are tied together by the thread of speculation. The very essence of science is to reason from the known to the unknown.
– Liberty Hyde Bailey
Take the obvious, add a cupful of brains, a generous pinch of imagination, a bucketful of courage and daring, stir well and bring to a boil.
– Bernard Baruch
We have dreamt of every woman there is, and dreamt too of the miracle that would bring us the pleasure of being a woman, for women have all the qualities - courage, passion, the capacity to love, cunning - whereas all our imagination can do is naively pile up the illusion of courage.
– Jean Baudrillard
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 allows us to escape the predictable. It enables us to reply to the common wisdom that we cannot soar by saying, Just watch!
– Bill Bradley
Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.
– William C. Bryant
There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.
– Edmund Burke
The moon develops the imagination, as chemicals develop photographic images.
– Sheila Ballantyne