The imagination is the power that enables us to perceive the normal in the abnormal, the opposite of chaos in chaos.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Imagination helps us find patterns and meaning even in chaotic or strange situations.
- In plain terms
- Imagination finds order in chaos.
- What can you take from it?
- Use creativity to make sense of confusion.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Where do you find order?
- Is chaos real?
Another view
Not all chaos has hidden order.
More from Wallace Stevens
What the poet has in mind . . . is that poetic value is an intrinsic value. It is not the value of knowledge. It is not the value of faith. It is the value of …
Permalink to quote #188 The truth seems to be that we live in concepts of the imagination before the reason has established them. If this is true, then reason is simply the methodizer…
Permalink to quote #190 The operation of the imagination in life is more significant than its operation in or in relation to works of art... in life what is important is the truth as …
Permalink to quote #187
Related quotes
How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the r…
John MuirJohn Muir quote #42 The primary Imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of cre…
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeSamuel Taylor Coleridge quote #108 There was such idiot minstrelsy in rain, So many clappers going without bells, That these bethous compose a heavenly gong. One voice repeating, one tireless ch…
Wallace StevensWallace Stevens quote #136