"Imagination is more important than knowledge".  Even out of its scientific context, Einstein's observation is true.
The word 'imagination' to most people means the ability to invent stories, or create paintings or compose music and therefore is the domain of a small minority of people.


When people say "I have no imagination", they are in denial.  We all have imagination.
Children live in their imagination, mainly to escape life in the giant shadow of the adult world. A child will turn a stick into a sword, an overgrown garden into a magic forest.


As adults, we live far more in the realm of the imagination than we care to admit.  We get involved in the plots and characters in novels, short stories, films, television drama and comedy, and theatre.  So it's not just inventors who use their imagination, but all readers, viewers, listeners.
Who doesn't fantasise occasionally about being in a better place, or being a happier person?  We imagine some future occasion we are looking forward to, or outwitting an enemy, or making love.  Eugene O'Neill said:
"A life of illusions is a tragic life, but a life devoid of illusions would be intolerable".


Great leaps in science, as well as the arts, in mathematics, in the perception and understanding of life, have all come from the human imagination.


The best use of the imagination I believe is the ability to imagine what someone else feels, to empathise with them.  The 'golden rule' Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' is based on this very ability, or lack of.


Our school systems are based on acquiring knowledge, with very little room for the imagination.  There should be room for both.  Exercising and developing the imagination can be employed in all subjects and makes those subjects come alive.  When will politicians stop sacrificing children's imagination on the altar of knowledge, because until they do stop, they are all culpable criminals?