“We are only as blind as we want to be.”

— Maya Angelou

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Maya Angelou 247

American author and poet 1928–2014

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

“Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”

José Saramago book Blindness

Source: Blindness (1995), p. 326

“we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

“The question is not whether something is wrong with subjectivity. We are embedded in it, so we can only deal with it, or be blind and attempt to ignore it.”

Carlos Gershenson (1978) Mexican researcher

Source: Design and Control of Self-organizing Systems (2007), p. 29

“There's no dearth of kindness
In this world of ours;
Only in our blindness
We gather thorns for flowers.”

Gerald Massey (1828–1907) British poet

There's no Dearth of Kindness, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“AMBITION is to the mind, what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower, by reason of our blindness. But alas, when we are at the summit of a vain ambition, we are also at the depth of real misery. We are placed where time cannot improve, but must impair us; where chance and change cannot befriend, but may betray us; in short, by attaining all we wish, and gaining all we want, we have only reached a pinnacle, where we have nothing to hope, but every thing to fear.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol I; XXXVII
Lacon (1820)

“We are indeed a blind race, and the next generation, blind to its own blindness, will be amazed at ours.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

p, 125
Accent on Form: An Anticipation of the Science of Tomorrow (1955)

“He paints for the blind, and we are the blind, and he lets us see for sure what we saw long ago but weren't sure we saw.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

On painter Rufino Tamayo.
I Used to Believe I Had Forever — Now I'm Not So Sure (1968)
Context: He paints for the blind, and we are the blind, and he lets us see for sure what we saw long ago but weren't sure we saw. He paints for the dead, to remind us that — great good God, think of it — we're alive, and on our way to weather, from the sea to the hot interior, to watermelon there, a bird at night chasing a child past flowering cactus, a building on fire, barking dogs, and guitar-players not playing at eight o'clock, every picture saying, "Did you live, man? Were you alive back there for a little while? Good for you, good for you, and wasn't it hot, though? Wasn't it great when it was hot, though?"

“The question suddenly came into my head, 'And if we were all blind?' And then immediately, as if answering myself, 'But we are all blind.”

José Saramago book Blindness

Um dia, sentado à mesa, pensei: E se fôssemos todos cegos? Imediatamente me veio a resposta: Nós somos todos cegos.
On the idea for his next novel (Blindness), which came to him while sitting in a restaurant; New York Times interview with Alan Riding (1998), as quoted in Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies, 6th Edition (Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture, 2001), p. 131.

“Our failure to hear His voice when we want to is due to the fact that we do not in general want to hear it, that we want it only when we think we need it.”

Dallas Willard (1935–2013) American philosopher

Source: Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God

“We are only as blind as we want to be.”

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Maya Angelou 247

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