“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

Last update Feb. 12, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity,…" by Douglas Adams?

Douglas Adams 317

English writer and humorist 1952–2001

Related quotes

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

Anaïs Nin book Little Birds

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

“They don't know how to watch things. They don't know how to see anything but what they expect to see.”

Orson Scott Card book Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus (1996)

“You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

“When we talk of "exploring the mystical," we are not trying to dig into creation, because if you dig into creation, it will only get more complex. It will not bring clarity; it will only bring more complexity. That is why the yogis looked in a different direction. We looked inward. If you look inward, a different dimension opens up. Now instead of things getting more complex, you get to clarity. It is because of this that we say that those who look inward have a third eye. They see things that others cannot see. They have brought a new clarity to life.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

“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

“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

“In their quest for freedom and in their attempts to prevent the oppressor from striping them of all the things they need to exist, the people see things as moving from A to B to C; they do not see things as moving from A to Z.”

Huey P. Newton (1942–1989) Co-founder of the Black Panther Party

On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver from the Black Panther Party and the Defection of the Black Panther Party from the Black Community
To Die For The People