“We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

— Anaïs Nin, book Little Birds

The quote "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." is famous quote by Anaïs Nin (1903–1977), writer of novels, short stories, and erotica.

The Seduction of the Minotaur (1961); the documentation of the conflicting citations available on this page ( HNet http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=H-Judaic&month=1108&msg=RizwZWCgeA8woVU9mNOEYQ) seems very thorough, and in the end attributes the quote to this novel, which includes the line: Lillian was reminded of the talmudic words: "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are." With Nin's description of the statement as "Talmudic" it afterwards began to be attributed to the Jewish Talmud, without any cited version or passage. Similar statements appear in You Can Negotiate Anything (1982) by Herb Cohen: "You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are"; and in Awareness (1992) by Anthony de Mello: "We see people and things not as they are, but as we are". Another similar statement without cited source is also attributed to Nin https://web.archive.org/web/20050322041559/http://learn-gs.org/learningctr/tutorial/4.html: We see the world as "we" are, not as "it" is; because it is the "I" behind the "eye" that does the seeing. Disputed Variant: We don't see people as they are. We see people as we are. Source: Little Birds

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 23, 2024. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Anaïs Nin278

writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903–1977

Related quotes

“Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

“But I suppose there might be good in things, even if we don't see it.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

“We see things not as they are, but as we are ourselves.”

H. M. Tomlinson (1873–1958) British writer

The Gift http://books.google.com/books?id=TU8jSMUix_wC&q=&quot;We+see+things+not+as+they+are+but+as+we+are+ourselves&quot;&pg=PA149#v=onepage

“I don't suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess at, and many more things that we can't.”

Beth Gutcheon (1945) American writer

Source: More Than You Know

“We usually see only the things we are looking for — so much so that we sometimes see them where they are not.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 237
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be.”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

From a series of interviews with Marco Livingstone (April 22 - May 7, 1980 and July 6 - 7, 1980) quoted in Livingstone's David Hockney (1981) , p. 112
1980s
Context: When conventions are old, there's quite a good reason, it's not arbitrary. So Picasso discovered that, as it were, and I'm sure that for him that was probably almost as exciting as discovering Cubism, rediscovering conventions of ordinary appearance, one-point perspective or something. The purists think you're going backwards, but I know you'd go forward. Future art that is based on appearances won't look like the art that's gone before. Even revivals of a period are not the same. The Renaissance is not the same as ancient Greece; the Gothic revival is not the same as Gothic. It might look like that at first, but you can tell it's not. The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to the camera. That shouldn't necessarily be.

“How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees everything at once. We don't. There's a hierarchy. Why do I pick out that thing, that thing, that thing?”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Mark Feeney, "David Hockney keeps seeking new avenues of exploration," Boston Globe (26 February 2006)
2000s