“People only see what they are prepared to see.”
Source: The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes

“The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
Robertson Davies as quoted in The White Bedouin (2007) by George Potter, p. 241
Misattributed

“People who get eyeball arthritis see only what they're supposed to see, like that TV screen.”
"Hunter Lake", The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2003, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains (2005)
Fiction

Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas (1992)

“What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.”
Source: A Time for New Dreams