Imagination has Changed Our World

"The founders of social movements, the Protestant reformers, the founders of the trades unions, Mary Wollstonecraft, people who suggested that we could do it differently, are heroes...People who suggested a new self image for women and gays. People picked it up and ran with it, but it didn't emerge from anything participatory. It was an achievement on the part of the people with more powerful imaginations than most..."

"...thinking about justice and democracy must be based not on arguing from appearances to some grand theory, but by imaginative articulation of 'still only dimly imagined future practice': we need to tell imaginative stories of new possibilities rather than build political theories."

From Pragmatist Philosophy and Action Research: Readings and Conversation with Richard Rorty, Peter Reason, Action Research, 2003.