quotations about hindsight
In retrospect it becomes clear that hindsight is definitely overrated!
ALFRED E. NEUMAN
Mad Magazine
Hindsight is of little value in the decision-making process. It distorts our memory for events that occurred at the time of the decision so that the actual consequence seems to have been a "foregone conclusion." Thus, it may be difficult to learn from our mistakes.
DIANE F. HALPERN
Thought and Knowledge
Remembering. I am half-smiling at ridiculous situations, crazy people and strange places, all with the benefit of hindsight. I admit I am choosing my memories selectively. I am quickening time, losing years and even improving my looks. I have never included the bad side which, I know, is an integral part of one's memories. That was not for me.
JOHN KEMP
Sticky Wicket
Hindsight, I think, is a useless tool. We, each of us, are at a place in our lives because of innumerable circumstances, and we, each of us, have a responsibility (if we do not like where we are) to move along life's road, to find a better path if this one does not suit, or to walk happily along this one if it is indeed our life's way. Changing even the bad things that have gone before would fundamentally change who we are, and whether or not that would be a good thing, I believe, it is impossible to predict. So I take my past experiences ... and try to regret nothing.
R. A. SALVATORE
Sea of Swords
All that lovely hindsight doesn't mean that you should go back to what was.
TIFFANY JOHNSON
Find Your Happily Ever After
Hindsight is a tricky business. It means by definition the historian always knows more than the men and women he is studying.
JOSEPH L. HARSH
Taken at the Flood
Wisdom in hindsight is cold comfort to those who lost mightily.
ERIK GERDING
Law, Bubbles, and Financial Regulation
It might sharpen our understanding of the past, but as a path drawn in reverse, hindsight doesn't show all the false starts and the wrong turns we took in our efforts to find a path forward. Hindsight can be disingenuous; it suggests that there was a path to be followed even when we couldn't see it. The fact remains that there is never a clear path as we move through life. We fumble and struggle, and ... we find our way.
CONNIE RUBEN & KATE O'NEILL
The Stages of Grace
To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago."
ROGER ZELAZNY
Sign of the Unicorn
Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
CHRISTIAN D. LARSON
The Optimist Creed
Reality looks much more obvious in hindsight than in foresight. People who experience hindsight bias misapply current hindsight to past foresight. They perceive events that occurred to have been more predictable before the fact than was actually the case.
HERSH SHEFRIN
Finance and the Psychology of Investing
Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.
BILLY WILDER
attributed, Wit and Wisdom of the Moviemakers
Hindsight is the time machine
You will live certain perils
Over
And
Over
But the second time around
Will be more painful than the first.
DAVID JONATHAN NEWMAN
Pure Luck
Hindsight is an exact science.
GUY BELLAMY
The Sinner's Congregation
Of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving.
JOHN FLETCHER
attributed, Words of Wisdom
I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus Rex
It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.
S. J. WATSON
Before I Go to Sleep
We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has.
MILAN KUNDERA
Laughable Loves
Of all forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving.
JEAN-CLAUDE FAVEZ
The Red Cross and the Holocaust
Hindsight is always perfect, as the saying goes. However, the process that reaches that state of perfect vision is not instantaneous or in any way easy. The courage to question everything is the wheel against which the lenses of hindsight are ground. Accepting the unacceptable answers to questions you didn't know to ask is the quality which makes us human, and enables us to take the leaps of understanding, the leaps of faith, which grant wisdom.
JUSTIN E. GRIFFIN
The Holy Grail: The Legend, the History, the Evidence