Nikola Tesla: Imagination and the Man That Invented the 20th Century

by Sean Patrick

This is the beauty of imagination. An unexpected dead end in one journey is merely an opportunity to set a new course for another. Losing what we have can only do us real harm when we feel we can’t create it, or something equally valuable or compelling, again, and that ability resides squarely in our imagination. “There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often the case with young delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the behalf of the whole of humanity,” Tesla wrote.

Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge,” because “knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

All great geniuses are incredibly creative in their own ways. They’re able to take what is known, dream of new possibilities, and bring them into the world. Every mathematical enigma solved, every masterful symphony composed, every revolutionary machine invented, every brilliant philosophy penned, every great corporation built...they all sprang from a person with an extraordinary imagination.

Marcus Aurelius once said that a person’s life is “dyed with the color of his imagination.” Your journey to greatness certainly will be too. Stop and think for a second the frontiers that lie ahead for our species. The Earth has been thoroughly conquered. The once radical philosophies of equality, tolerance, and individualism are embraced by much of the civilized world. The secrets of the atom have given us the ability to ext...

When you start viewing creativity as a process of combination, and imagination as the ability to connect, stretch, and merge things in new ways, creative brilliance becomes less mystifying.