“Pupil, puppet, person, eye. It is not my mirror.”
We the People interview (1996)
Context: I want to just go back to a great rabbinical and also, as you see, monastic, Christian development beyond what the Greeks like Plato or Cicero already knew about friendship. That it is from your eye that I find myself. There's a little thing there. They called it pupilla, a "puppet" of myself which I can see in your eye. The black thing in your eye.
Pupil, puppet, person, eye. It is not my mirror. It is you making me the gift of that which Ivan is for you. That's the one who says "I" here. I'm purposely not saying, this is my person, this is my individuality, this is my ego. No. I'm saying this is the one who answers you here, whom you have given to him.
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Ivan Illich 66
austrian philosopher and theologist 1926–2002Related quotes
“I will sit in the pupil of your eyes and that will carry your sight into the heart of the things”
"The Human Situation"
The Still Centre (1939)
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" in The New England Magazine, Vol. 1 (1831), p. 431.
Misattributed
“I look in the mirror through the eyes of the child that was me.”
“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.”
LXXX. TEACHER
Orphic Sayings
Context: The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence. He inspires self-trust. He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him. He will have no disciples. A noble artist, he has visions of excellence and revelations of beauty, which he has neither impersonated in character, nor embodied in words. His life and teachings are but studies for yet nobler ideals.
Our brain functions as a highly creative ‘camera obscura’ – the forerunner of the modern photographic camera, named from the Latin for dark room.
Amazing Visual Illusions: Trick Your Mind and Feast Your Eyes (2011).