Nureyev (horse)
Overview
 
Nureyev was a Kentucky-bred
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...

 Thoroughbred
Thoroughbred
The Thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. Although the word thoroughbred is sometimes used to refer to any breed of purebred horse, it technically refers only to the Thoroughbred breed...

 racehorse
Horse racing
Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...

 and champion sire. As a racehorse he was best known as the disqualified "winner" of the 2000 Guineas in 1980.
Nureyev was sired by Northern Dancer
Northern Dancer
Northern Dancer was a Canadian-bred Thoroughbred racehorse and the most successful sire of the 20th Century. The National Thoroughbred Racing Association calls him "one of the most influential sires in Thoroughbred history"....

 out of the mare Special, making him a half brother of to several winners including Fairy Bridge, the dam of Sadler's Wells
Sadler's Wells (horse)
Sadler's Wells was a Thoroughbred racehorse that was later a leading sire in France, Great Britain & Ireland and North America during the 1990s. He was foaled in 1981 in the United States, but achieved most of his racing and breeding fame in Europe....

. He was bought in 1978 at the Keeneland yearling sale
Keeneland Sales
The Keeneland Sales is an American Thoroughbred auction house in Lexington, Kentucky founded in 1935 as a nonprofit racing/auction entity on 147 acres of farmland west of Lexington, which had been owned by Jack O. Keene...

 by Stavros Niarchos
Stavros Niarchos
Stavros Spyros Niarchos was a Greek shipping tycoon, sometimes known as "The Golden Greek." In 1952, Stavros Niarchos built the first supertankers capable of transporting large quantities of oil, and subsequently earned millions of dollars as global demand for his ships increased.- Early life :He...

 for US$1.3 million and raced in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. Niarchos named the colt in honor of the famous ballet
Ballet
Ballet is a type of performance dance, that originated in the Italian Renaissance courts of the 15th century, and which was further developed in France and Russia as a concert dance form. The early portions preceded the invention of the proscenium stage and were presented in large chambers with...

 dancer, Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Nureyev
Rudolf Khametovich Nureyev was a Russian dancer, considered one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of the 20th century. Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressive areas of the dance, providing a new role to the male ballet dancer who once served only as support to the women.In 1961 he...

.
Trained by Francois Boutin
François Boutin
François Boutin was a French Thoroughbred horse trainer. The son of a farmer, he was born in the village of Beaunay in the northerly Seine Maritime département. He began riding horses at a young age and competed in show jumping and cross-country equestrianism...

, in November 1979 Nureyev made his two-year-old racing debut in France.
Quotations

Nothing is more dangerous to reason than the flights of the imagination and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers. Men of bright fancies may in this respect be compared to those angels whom the scripture represents as covering their eyes with their wings.

A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume, Book 1, Section 4, p.225

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers by Richard Rorty, Volume 3, 1998.

The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution, which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

Our Knowledge of the External World by Bertrand Russell

The true function of logic,... as applied to matters of experience,... is analytic rather than constructive; taken a priori, it shows the possibility of hitherto unsuspected alternatives more often than the impossibility of alternatives which seemed prima facie possible. Thus, while it liberates imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate as to what the world is.

Our Knowledge of the External World by Bertrand Russell

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

Poetry and Imagination by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1872.

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Introduction to Men at War by Ernest Hemingway, 1942.

There is no life I knowthat compares to pure imaginationLiving there you'll be freeif you truly wish to be

Pure Imagination|Pure Imagination by Gene Wilder, 1971.

Impossibility is only the figment of an insufficient imagination.

The Song Of Sin by Phil Duncan, 1998.

 
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