“We Don’t See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are”
Anaïs Nin
Anaïs Nin did employ this statement in her 1961 work “Seduction of the Minotaur”.
When Nin wrote the adage she did not take credit for the notion. Instead, she pointed to a major religious text:
Lillian was reminded of the talmudic words: “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
In 2005 an article in Newsweek magazine contained an epigraph that matched the adage under investigation. The statement was identified as an English translation of a comment from a section within the Talmud:
“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”— Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani, as quoted in the Talmudic tractate Berakhot (55b.)
