I collect thoughts about imagination, mainly because I think there is too little of it. Here is a passage from Wendell Berry's Hanna Coulter. I love the picture. As I play with how to best teach physics one of the powerful motivators is to imagine ourselves using our new talents in physics to change lives for the better. This has produced powerful images for students that truly motivate them through the harder parts of learning physics.
It is hard to live one life and imagine another. But imagination is what is needed. Want of imagination make things unreal enough to be destroyed. By imagination I mean knowledge and love. I mean compassion. People of power kill children, the old send the young to die, because they have no imagination. They have power. Can you have power and imagination at the same time? Can you kill people you don't know and have compassion for them at the same time?