Quotes About Imagination

But the truth is different. You're much more likely to have a Silver Emma moment than a Bronze Borghini one. When researchers have tracked people's thoughts by asking them to keep daily diaries or by pinging them randomly to ask what's on their mind, they've discovered that If Onlys outnumber At Leasts in people's lives—often by a wide margin.[7] One study found that 80 percent of the counterfactuals people generate are If Onlys.

Buy a small notebook and begin carrying it with you wherever you go. When you see great design, make a note of it.

Story represents a pathway to understanding that doesn't run through the left side of the brain.

Mini-sagas are extremely short stories—just fifty words long…no more, no less.

Most inventions and breakthroughs come from reassembling existing ideas in new ways.

largely metaphorical."7 In a complex world, mastery of metaphor—a whole-minded ability that some cognitive scientists have called "imaginative rationality"—has become ever more valuable

in a time of abundance, when the largest rewards go to those who can devise novel and compelling creations, metaphor-making is vital.

right hemisphere is responsible for our ability to comprehend metaphors

When you are playful, you are activating the right side of your brain. The logical brain is a limited brain. The right side is unlimited. You can be anything you want.

Empathy isn't sympathy—that is, feeling bad for someone else. It is feeling with someone else, sensing what it would be like to be that person. Empathy is a stunning act of imaginative derring-do, the ultimate virtual reality—climbing into another's mind to experience the world from that person's perspective.

Storytelling doesn't replace analytical thinking," he says. "It supplements it by enabling us to imagine new perspectives and new worlds…. Abstract analysis is easier to understand when seen through the lens of a well-chosen story."5 Now Denning is spreading his message—and telling his story—to organizations worldwide.

A little kid's life bursts with autotelic experiences.

According to Goleman, IQ can influence the profession one enters. My IQ, for instance, is way too low for a career in astrophysics. But within a profession, mastery of L-Directed Thinking matters relatively little. More important are qualities that are tougher to quantify, the very kinds of high-concept and high-touch abilities I've been mentioning—imagination, joyfulness, and social dexterity.

It is in fact the discovery and creation of problems rather than any superior knowledge, technical skill, or craftsmanship that often sets the creative person apart from others in his field."8

Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it - often far, far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on, based on preliminary successes.

As a kid I wanted to write science fiction, and I was never without a book. Later I really got into being a scientist and never thought I'd be writing novels.

Science fiction inspires scientists, but it doesn't exist to dictate what our future should look like. Great science fiction is fun to read and it makes you think, period. Claiming anything more than that is dicey. Grand visions of the future were more prevalent in the golden-age science fiction, but all fiction is a reflection of the current times. As science moves more quickly, the horizon of science fiction tends to recede closer to the present.

I found stories trapped in patterns of neurons.

Her weight is delicate in my arms, like a leaf carried on the quaking back of this monstrous river. I chose to protect her and I failed. I do not know if the choices we make are ours or not; whether the planets hold any more agency in their orbits than we do in ours. But even if I am a prisoner to clockwork, I cannot imagine leaving her.

I believe in the future. —MICHAEL CRICHTON

It's hard to wipe your eyes when you have whirring buzzsaws for hands.

The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.

The number of combinations possible and hence the number of different thoughts or brain states each of us can have exceeds the number of known particles in the entire known universe.

We create because we cannot stop ourselves from doing so. Because our brains were made that way.