"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." This quote by Albert Einstein exemplifies the argument of imagination over knowledge. Einstein favored imagination, his words place imagination and knowledge in opposition, implying that knowledge should concern what is present to the senses. Many artists, geniuses, and other rebellious spirits have claimed imagination as their territory. Imagination comes before knowledge which makes imagination more important than knowledge.
Imagination is more significant than knowledge because knowledge is gained from imagination. Knowledge coded, stored and expressed using symbols can be broken up and reassembled in an ambidextrous novel combination. It is this act of recombination which underlies the power to imagine. Without imagination there would be no knowledge. Knowledge alone would be able to prove new ideas but without imagination the new ideas would never have been thought of. Knowledge starts out as imagination. When someone thinks of something, it is proved, and it becomes knowledge. Imagination is and must be grounded in our knowledge. The more memories accumulated, the more material there is to work with, the richer and stronger imaginations grow.
Without imagination, it is hard to learn almost anything in school or elsewhere in a way that offers love of knowledge. Without imagination, there would be no passion, no empathy, no deeper understanding; only skimming the surface of people and ideas. It is, in its broadest form, thinking outside of oneself, outside of a timeframe and outside of feelings. It is projecting into the future and, in turn, creating a future. Imagination is creating mental images, circumstances, and feelings in order to learn, create, plan for the future, or cope with current circumstances. Imagination has the power to give ordinary actions extraordinary meaning.