Because most children are highly imaginative, it is supposed by some that to reach maturity we ought to leave imagination behind, like the habit of s… - J. B. Priestley

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Because most children are highly imaginative, it is supposed by some that to reach maturity we ought to leave imagination behind, like the habit of smearing our faces with jam or chocolate. But an adult in whom imagination has withered is mentally lame and lopsided, in danger of turning into a zombie or a murderer. It is the creative imagination that has given our ruthless bloodthirsty species its occasional gleams of nobility, its hope of rising above the muck it spreads.

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About J. B. Priestley

John Boynton Priestley OM (13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984) was an English playwright, novelist, social commentator, biographer, literary critic, screenwriter and broadcaster. During his lifetime, he combined popular success with critical respect.

Also Known As

Native Name: John Boynton Priestley
Alternative Names: J Priestley
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Additional quotes by J. B. Priestley

The very newspapers that celebrate the latest conquest in their largest print also keep asking us what is the matter with Woman nowadays, when she has so much she never had before. The answer is that she is tired of having to live with neurotic, immature conquerors.

I have pointed out already how ideas seep down to wider and commoner levels of intelligence and feeling until at last they are believed to be solid realities. It is precisely the 'hard-headed and realistic' who all too often exist in cages made out of largely discredited hypotheses. They serve prison sentences behind walls and doors they only imagine are there.

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He was quite capable of talking just as men talk in bad stories in popular magazines, and Miss Matfield had sometimes wondered whether it was because he had read a great many bad stories or because the stories were nearer the truth than one thought and were worked up, on the fringes of Empire, out of men like Major Ansdell.

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