Life & Wisdom Quote by Colin Wilson

Imagination, for Colin Wilson, isn’t a trapdoor out of life; it’s the lever that moves it. The line takes aim at the cozy stereotype of the dreamer as a conscientious objector to reality, someone who retreats into fantasy because the world is too blunt, too disappointing, too fixed. Wilson flips that moral geometry. Reality isn’t a monolith you either accept or flee. It’s something you actively assemble.

The phrasing matters: “should be used” is almost stern, like a manual for consciousness. Wilson isn’t praising imagination as a gift; he’s insisting it’s a tool with responsibilities. That “not...but” construction also smuggles in a critique of passive consumption. Imagination as escape maps neatly onto entertainment, distraction, and the private consolations of inner life. Imagination as creation implies risk: making choices, imposing form, turning desire into projects, and confronting the friction of other people’s versions of the real.

Context sharpens the intent. Wilson emerged in postwar Britain as part of the “Angry Young Men” moment, skeptical of complacent rationalism and the small domestic horizons on offer. His wider work circles “outsider” figures who refuse to accept the given world as final. This quote reads like a compact manifesto for that stance: the outsider’s rebellion isn’t just saying no to society, it’s saying yes to a more vivid, deliberately constructed life.

It also lands cleanly in a modern culture saturated with escapism-as-default. Wilson’s challenge isn’t anti-fantasy; it’s anti-sedation. Use imagination to author reality, not anesthetize yourself against it.