Role of imagination

I really like what JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series) said recently when she was given an honorary doctor of letters degree. She urged the Harvard grads to use their influence and status to speak out on behalf of the powerless. She said

"We do not need magic to transform our world,"

"We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better."
"Imagination gives one the ability to empathize with others"
"Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation,"

"In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity; it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared."

Rowling described a low point seven years after graduating from college, when she was a poor single mother.

"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are ever after secure in your ability to survive,"

"You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity."
She called such knowledge

"a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."