The man who has no imagination has no wings.

At face value, the line equates imagination with “wings”: the capacity to rise above immediate limits, to envision possibilities beyond present circumstances, and to move with freedom rather than mere necessity. In the idiom of a public figure like Ali—whose persona blended athletic performance with bravura, prediction, and self-mythologizing—the sentiment underscores how aspiration and creative self-conception can be as enabling as physical gifts. The aphorism also implies a critique of purely literal or utilitarian thinking: without imaginative projection, a person may remain grounded by convention, fear, or the constraints of the moment. Imagination becomes not escapism but a practical engine of ambition and transformation.