Stephen Hawking on imagination
Stephen Hawking saw the value of imagination. In his book ‘Brief Answers to the Big Questions’, he paid homage to Albert Einstein who looked to his imagination for answers about the universe.
“He [Einstein] was undaunted by common sense,” Hawking wrote, “the idea that things must be the way they seemed. He had the courage to pursue ideas that seemed absurd to others. And this set him free to be ingenious, a genius of his time and every other.”
Hawking credited imagination as a key element to Einstein’s success in re-imagining the universe.
“Imagination remains our most powerful attribute,” he wrote. “With it, we can roam anywhere in space and time.”
His advice: “for each mind to achieve its full potential, it needs a spark. The spark of enquiry and wonder.”
Hawking was remarkable. Restricted for most of his life physically by the impacts of motor neurone disease, his mind remained free.
He wrote that his life was spent “travelling across the universe, inside my mind.”
Where can imagination take you? Anywhere. And everywhere.
