We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

Rowling has described her work at Amnesty International and how imagining other people’s experiences can produce practical solidarity. She asks Harvard graduates to use their education, status and political influence for people without those advantages. This sentence concludes that appeal before she turns to the value of lasting friendships.

Empathy and the ability to imagine different circumstances can be turned into real action for other people.

The inner power is not supernatural wish fulfilment or a guarantee of personal success. The surrounding paragraph concerns speaking for the powerless and using social and political influence responsibly.

Kindness, Compassion, Power, Society, Morality, Change, Wisdom

• Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. Epicurus
• It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
• The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Martin Luther King Jr.
• That which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road. Marcus Aurelius

• news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2008/06/haa-annual-meeting

J. K. Rowling, J. K. Rowling, The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination, Harvard University commencement address, 5 June 2008; text published by the Harvard Gazette. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/we-do-not-need-magic-to-change-the-world/ (30 October 2026).

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