'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.'

A quote by Lauren Bacall

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."

A quote by Florence Nightingale

"Poetry and imagination begin life."

'An idea is salvation by imagination.'

- US architect Frank Lloyd Wright

'Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.'

- Pablo Picasso

'Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.'

- US President James Madison (1751-1836)

A quote by Howard Hughes

"Do the impossible, because almost everyone has told me my ideas are merely fantasies."

'It's those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.'

- Author Malcolm Gladwell (1963 - present)

'The arts and sciences are avatars of human creativity. It's our attempt to influence things, the universe internal to ourselves and external to us.'

- Mae Jemison (1956-present), the first Black woman in space

'There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.'

-Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

'Happiness depends more upon the internal frame of a persons own mind—than on the externals in the world.'

- George Washington (1732-1799)

'Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.'

- Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

'How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.' - Anne Frank

'Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.'

- Inventor Thomas Edison (1847 - 1931)

'The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.'

- Marine biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

A quote by scientist Nikola Tesla

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result ... His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."

'Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.'

- Maya Angelou

'May your future be limited only by your dreams.'

- Teacher and astronaut Christa McAuliffe (1948-1986)

'The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.'

- American musician BB King (1925-2015)

'Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.'

- Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) in "Elenora"

'Everybody has talent and it's just a matter of moving around until you've discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love a great deal and something you can lose yourself in.'

- George Lucas (1944-present)

'I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.'

- Actress and singer Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

'Mistakes are almost always of a sacred nature. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: rationalize them, understand them thoroughly. After that, it will be possible for you to sublimate them.'

- Artist Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)

'And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.'

-Ralph Ellison, from "Invisible Man" (1913-1994)

Science communicator Bill Nye (1955 - ) on science

"Science is the key to our future, and if you don’t believe in science, then you’re holding everybody back."

'We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.'

- Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury

'In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.'

- Isaac Asimov

Mathematicians often solve problems using wordless mental processes

It's a common technique among expert mathematicians, where thinkers rely on intuition, blurry perceptions and subconscious work—no writing, no formulas. The state is distinct from daydreaming, and often relies on sudden illuminations stemming from extended periods of subconscious reflection.

A quote by Magic Johnson

"Celebrate the life you had, not the life you could've had."

'Keep working on a plan. Make no little plans. Make the biggest one you can think of, and spend the rest of your life carrying it out.'

- President Harry Truman (1884-1972)

'If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.'

- Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

The ideas of Einstein and Freud combined in 'The Persistence of Memory'

The Persistence of Memory was painted on a canvas roughly the size of a sheet of paper, depicting a desolate landscape with melting clocks, ants, and a distorted figure. The piece incorporates Freud and Einstein's ideas, resulting in a haunting composition symbolizing time's fluidity and Dalí's personal anxieties.

Polish chemist and physicist Marie Curie (1867–1934) on learning

“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

Discoveries in electromagnetism became the catalyst for overturning Isaac Newton

To maintain the consistency of experimental results involving electricity, magnetism, and light, time and space had to cease being absolute and could change in value to keep the speed of light constant. This cosmic speed limit forced Einstein to revise the existing model of gravity.

'I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning ... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.'

- Miles Davis (1926-1991)

'Follow your enthusiasm. It's something I've always believed in. Find those parts of your life you enjoy the most. Do what you enjoy doing.'

- "Muppets" creator Jim Henson (1936-1990)

'Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.'

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)

'Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them.'

- Actress Betty White (1922-2021)

Time may be an emergent, rather than a fundamental, property of the universe

Some theories of everything—mathematical models that try to explain all aspects of the universe, including quantum phenomena and gravity—do not incorporate time. If a time-neglecting version of such a theory were ever validated, it might suggest that time is a feature that emerges from our limited perception of the universe.

Hear Carl Sagan reflect on the smallness of humanity

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) on the Standard Model

"If I could remember the name of all these particles, I'd be a botanist."

A quote from Sally Ride

“Three Secrets to Success: Be willing to learn new things. Be able to assimilate new information quickly. Be able to get along with and work with other people.”

'The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd.'

- Poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Scientific progress works toward absolute truth, but can never reach it

Through the acquisition of scientific knowledge, scientists construct explanations of the world, which are rigorously tested and verified until they narrow down to a leading theory of the natural world. However, because of how science works, these ideas will never become factual, as they must always remain open to be iteratively revision based on new data.

Albert Einstein taught courses in Davos

This silent video from the 1920s shows footage of Einstein at Davos. The famous scientist spent time there, delivering public lectures on his theory of relativity as part of the town’s university courses.

'Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you'll start having positive results.'

- Willie Nelson (1933-present)

'The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.'

- Mark Twain, from "Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales"

Before Dawkins, other biologists proposed the power of mutating ideas

Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod proposed, “Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role.”

The universe expands by stretching space itself, not into anything beyond it

Thanks to Einstein’s relativity and Hubble’s observations, scientists understand that space stretches, like rising bread dough between raisins, with no "outside" to expand into. Some theories suggest our universe might be just one "bubble" in a vast multiverse, possibly floating on a higher-dimensional surface called a brane.

'Trust is one of the greatest economic forces on earth' - Charlie Munger