We use cookies to improve our service and to tailor our content and advertising to you. More infoClose You can manage your cookie settings via your browser at any time. To learn more about how we use cookies, please see our cookies policyClose
Children are a paradox. Their innocence ensures their honesty, and makes them good lie detectors and truth reporters. This perennial paradox is memorialized in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Emperor's New Clothes, which contrasts the real perception of a child with the surreal self-deception of adults. How ironic that adults must fear and feign the sincerity they once enjoyed as children. To quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., "Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children."
Children are a paradox. Their innocence ensures their honesty, and makes them good lie detectors and truth reporters. This perennial paradox is memorialized in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale, The Emperor's New Clothes, which contrasts the real perception of a child with the surreal self-deception of adults. How ironic that adults must fear and feign the sincerity they once enjoyed as children. To quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., "Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children."
Competing interests: No competing interests