Man’s imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.
Imagination is not a faculty for escaping reality, but a faculty for rearranging the elements of reality to achieve human values; it requires and presupposes some knowledge of the elements one chooses to rearrange. An imagination divorced from knowledge has only one product: a nightmare . . . An imagination that replaces cognition is one of the surest ways to create neurosis.
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