"we do not see the world as it is..."

Fred Shapiro fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU
Sun Feb 11 19:02:49 UTC 2007


On Fri, 19 Jan 2007, Stephen Goranson wrote:

> The NY Times ("Help, I'm Surrounded by Jerks" webpage 2) quotes someone
> who says
> the following saying is from the Talmud. Is it?
>
> ?We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.?

The Yale Book of Quotations has the following:

We do not see things as they are, but as we are ourselves.
        Henry M. Tomlinson, _Out of Soundings_ ch. 10 (1931)

Apparently the YBQ did not think this was Talmudic in origin, or it would
have given a source from the Talmud.

Fred Shapiro


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