After dropping my son at school this morning, I pulled up to a red light. On the car in front of me, I noticed a bumper sticker with the quote, imagination is more important than knowledge, by Albert Einstein. That captured my full attention.
My initial reaction was, oh yeah, I couldn’t agree more! Perhaps because I’m a creative person whose imagination runs on overtime, this quote resonated with me, striking a deep chord. To me, its words were irrefutable.
Knowledge is great, but without imagination what can be done with that knowledge?
Throughout history, every major discovery has had imagination at its nucleus. How can I say this with such conviction? Simple. Those who make great discoveries, capable of altering our thinking, must have imagination to step outside the known facts to explore different ways of pondering things. Seeing them with eyes willing to look beyond known limitations. Taking what is known and tweaking it just enough to test its limits to see if they’ll hold true or if there might be greater knowledge to be gained.
Think about it. If it weren’t for imagination, there would be no skyscrapers, jaw-dropping bridges, the Panama Canal, electricity, space exploration, cures and preventative vaccines to many horrid diseases, Great Pyramids, a firm understanding of how the earth is round—not flat and a host of countless other amazing feats. Had the minds of those who first invented these things not been propelled to think on a grander scale than believed possible, none of these things would exist, for each was originally believed improbable if not impossible…except in those imaginative minds.
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