“To say that a thing is imaginary is not to dispose of it in the realm of mind, for the imagination, or the image making faculty, is a very important part of our mental functioning. An image formed by the imagination is a reality from the point of view of psychology; it is quite true that it has no physical existence, but are we going to limit reality to that which is material? We shall be far out of our reckoning if we do, for mental images are potent things, and although they do not actually exist on the physical plane, they influence it far more than most people suspect.”

Dion Fortune, Spiritualism and Occultism

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Dion Fortune10

British occultist and author 1890–1946

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“For in the Spirit-World there is Reality; as the process of differentiation proceeds, illusion is produced, and it is this mind, this growing mind, that makes the illusion. It is this growing mind that has endless images and pictures, that has the image-making faculty which we speak of as imagination, that has the reasoning faculty which builds on the airy picture that it has made— it is this which is the real creator of illusion, it is this which slays the Real, so far as the disciple is concerned, and his first work as disciple will be to slay the slayer.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

Source: https://theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/Annie%20Besant-In-The-Outer-Court.pdf In the Outer Court, 1895, p. 57

“We know only what we do, what we make, what we construct; and all that we make, all that we construct, are realities. I call them images, not in Plato's sense (namely that they are only reflections of reality), but I hold that these images are the reality itself and that there is no reality beyond this reality except when in our creative process we change the images: then we have created new realities.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote of Naum Gabo, 1950; as cited in: Eidos: a journal of painting, sculpture and design. Nr.1, p. 31
1936 - 1977

“I often told the fanatics of realism that there is no such thing as realism in art: it only exists in the mind of the observer. Art is a symbol, a thing conjuring up reality in our mental image. That is why I don't see any contradiction between abstract and figurative art either.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Source: undated quotes, Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003,' (2004), p. 25.

“As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America. has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 257.

“When we try in good faith to believe in materialism, in the exclusive reality of the physical, we are asking our selves to step aside; we are disavowing the very realm where we exist and where all things precious are kept — the realm of emotion and conscience, of memory and intention and sensation.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6

“The Bible says in Genesis 1, God said, I'm going to make man in my own image. If we're made in the image of God, why do we teach the kids grandpa was an ape? Now, evolution teaches we're getting better, and someday we are going to become god. The facts are we're getting worse. Things are falling apart. We have an incredible genetic load. We are mentally and physically deficient compared to Adam and Eve.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

“The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2 "On Philosophy and the Intellect" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims
Context: The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves it to the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.

“There is no wisdom in the words themselves. Wisdom resides in your imagination, or in the mental image that you generate within your mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“There is no wisdom in the words themselves. Wisdom resides in your imagination, or in the mental image that you generate within your mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“We know that under the image revealed there is another which is truer to reality and under this image still another and yet again still another under this last one, right down to the true image of that reality, absolute, mysterious, which no one will ever see or perhaps right down to the decomposition of any image, of any reality.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

As quoted by the interviewer from the introduction to an Italian publlication of Antonioni's screenplays.
Encountering Directors interview (1969)

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