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Quotes from The Reach of Imagination — Jacob Bronowski

1908–1974 Poland

← All quotes by Jacob Bronowski

12 quotes

All great scientists have used their imaginations freely, and let it ride them to outrageous conclusions without crying "Halt!"

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

Almost everything that we do that is worth doing is done in the first place in the mind's eye.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

The strength of the imagination, its enriching power and excitement, lies in its interplay with reality—physical and emotional.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

The symbol is the tool which gives man his power, and it is the same tool whether the symbols are images or words, mathematical signs or mesons.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

To imagine means to make images and to move them about inside one's head in new arrangements.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

When a man counts one, two, three, he is not only doing mathematics, he is on the path to the mysticism of numbers in Pythagoras and Vitruvius and Kepler, to the Trinity and the signs of the Zodiac.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

When a child begins to play games... he enters the gateway to reason and imagination together.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

Imagination is the manipulation of images in one's head... the rational manipulation... as well as the literary and artistic manipulation.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

With the... symbolic memory we spell out the future—not one but many futures, which we weigh one against another.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

I am using the word image in a wide meaning, which does not restrict it to the mind's eye as a visual organ. An image in my usage is what Charles Pierce called a sign...

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

The images play out for us events which are not present in our senses, and... create the future—a future that... may never come to exist in that form.

The Reach of Imagination (1967)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Jacob Bronowski (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.