A Quote by Maxwell Maltz

For imagination sets the goal picture which our automatic mechanism works on. We act, or fail to act, not because of will, as is so commonly believed, but because of imagination.

Maxwell Maltz

Quote Topics

Imagination Act Automatic Because Believed Commonly Fail Goal Mechanism Our Picture Sets Which Will Works

Quote Author

Maxwell Maltz
American - Scientist
March 10, 1889 - April 7, 1975

The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections. Every act of act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were thought unlike. An example is Newton’s thinking of the likeness between the thrown apple and moon sailing majestically in the sky. Hence, the ‘discovery’ of the laws of gravity.

Jacob Bronowski

When we find ourselves unable to reason (as one often does when presented with, say, a problem in algebra) it is because our imagination is not touched. One can begin to reason only when a clear picture has been formed in the imagination. Bad teaching is teaching which presents an endless procession of meaningless signs, words and rules, and fails to arouse the imagination.

W. W. Sawyer

Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than "you" ever could by conscious thought. "You" supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby.

Maxwell Maltz

Personally there is first: imagination; second: the act of writing - and third: the act/act of vocalizing.

Anne Waldman

Imagination is our ability to see inwardly and picture there that which has not yet appeared outwardly. Imagination is God's gift to us.

Donald Curtis

The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us and it knows where to strike, where it hurts. It knows the vulnerable spot, and life does not, our friends and lovers do not, because seldom do they have the imagination equal to the task.

Anais Nin

Your imagination creates the inner picture that allows you to participate in the act of creation.

Wayne Dyer

The thing about imagination is that by the very act of putting it down, there must be some truth in one's own imagination.

Dennis Potter

In love and friendship the imagination is as much exercised as the heart; and if either is outraged the other will be estranged. It is commonly the imagination which is wounded first, rather than the heart,--it is so much the more sensitive.

Henry David Thoreau

I act because I get money. Half the time I quote an exorbitant amount because I don't want to act. And sometimes it works.

Mahesh Manjrekar

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?

William Blake

Love is an act of imagination. For some of us, it will be the greatest creative triumph of our lives.

Ethel Person

Why does a woman carry a gun? Because, under our system, every citizen has the latitude to act in the absence of police; the latitude to act reasonably, to act immediately, to act in defense of self, to act in defense of another, to act with lethal force, to act with her acquired training and to act not in anger but to respond in purpose. To exercise the protections of that latitude in public policy, public interest and practical safety, all that is demanded of her is that she act reasonably under the circumstances.

John Longenecker

I discovered that I act because I really love to act. I don't act because maybe it will get me a magazine cover or that I can get on a talk show.

John Corbett

I've always felt that what I have going for me is not my imagination, because everyone has an imagination. What I have is a relentlessly controlled imagination. What looks like wild invention is actually quite carefully calculated.