Imagination

Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization.  Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.  Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities.  So I believe that dreams -- day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing -- are likely to lead to the betterment of the world.  The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization.  A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young.  I believe it.

-- Lyman Frank Baum (1856-1919), American author, actor, and creator, with illustrator William Wallace Denslow, of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)