Quotes & Sayings About Foresight

In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions.
[Why Societies Collapse, ABC Local, July 17, 2003] — Jared Diamond

[I]t's necessary to exert very great foresight every time you go to blame or praise a man, so that you won't speak incorrectly ... For you shouldn't suppose that, while stones are sacred and pieces of wood, and birds, and snakes, human beings are not. Rather of all these things, the most sacred is the good human being, while the most polluted is the wicked.
Speech attributed to Socrates in Plato, Minos 319a, trans. Thomas L. Pangle, in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas L. Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 63. — Plato

There is just no way any management with any intelligence and foresight cannot recognize the value of a corporate image. It is the best, single marketable investment that a company can make. — Malcolm Forbes

Foresight has been a distinguishing characteristic of all truly great political, religious, and social betterment leaders. — John Mott

I think Nature, if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her experimenting among the elements of humanity, she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her favours; whose life is only suffering; and whose action is one long protest against the ill foresight which flung them into consciousness. — James Anthony Froude

The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan. — Thomas Jefferson

As they do not see, behind the benefits of civilization, marvels of invention and construction which can only be maintained by great effort and foresight, they imagine that their role is limited to demanding these benefits peremptorily, as if they were natural rights. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

It is a fanatical notion that we interfere with the Holy Spirit if we make any preparation for prayer. The theological deficit in that assumption is that the Holy Spirit would not have us reason or use foresight or imagination or fit language. It assumes incorrectly that the only part of us that the Spirit wishes to work through is emotive impulsivity and spontaneous feeling-flow. It assumes incorrectly that the Holy Spirit does not also work through discipline, reason, reflection, and organization. — Thomas C. Oden

This absolute lack of objectivity might be said to resemble nothing so much as the lack of objectivity these same people had shown during Stalin's life, when they had been so supremely worshipful of his mind and strength of will, of his foresight and genius. Their hysterical worship of Stalin and their total and unconditional rejection of him sprang from the same soil. — Vasily Grossman

In a world with amazing amounts of statistics and demographics available, If you don't utilize foresight, statistics, demographics, projections and predictions the competition will. — Akutra-Ramses Atenosis Cea

Plan ahead or find trouble on the doorstep. — Confucius

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all. — Arthur C. Clarke

The trick now is to turn insight into foresight. The trick is to know this about your tomorrow, today ... Remember, your future is not coming to you; it's coming through you ... change your idea about the changes to come, even as you change your idea about the changes that have passed. Then you can change your experience of both. — Neale Donald Walsch

This antitrust thing will blow over. — Bill Gates

A young man who doesn't have the foresight to seek out the girl he wants to be with and actively pursue her, doesn't deserve her. — Colleen Houck

Entrepreneurial management in the new venture has four requirements: It requires, first, a focus on the market. It requires, second, financial foresight, and especially planning for cash flow and capital needs ahead. It requires, third, building a top management team long before the new venture actually needs one and long before it can actually afford one. And finally, it requires of the founding entrepreneur a decision in respect to his or her own role, area of work, and relationships. — Peter F. Drucker

I don't really have foresight as an actor as far as career trajectory - I just stick to no-brainer situations. — Adam Driver

In giving rise to man, the evolutionary process has, apparently for the first and only time in the history of the Cosmos, become conscious of itself.
So, the Devil's Chaplain might conclude, Stand tall, Bipedal Ape. The shark may outswim you, the cheetah outrun you, the swift outfly you, the capuchin outclimb you, the elephant outpower you, the redwood outlast you. But you have the biggest gifts of all: the gift of understanding the ruthlessly cruel process that gave us all existence; the gift of revulsion against its implications; the gift of foresight - something utterly foreign to the blundering short-term ways of natural selection - and the gift of internalizing the very cosmos. — Richard Dawkins

In the deepest night of trouble and sorrow God gives us so much to be thankful for that we need never cease our singing. With all our wisdom and foresight we can take a lesson in gladness and gratitude from the happy bird that sings all night, as if the day were not long enough to tell its joy. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

A real sacrifice involves a radical change in the character of a game which cannot be effected without foresight, fantasy, and the willingness to risk. — Leonid Shamkovich

Those who wander in the world avowedly and purposely in pursuit of happiness, who view every scene of present joy with an eye to what may succeed, certainly are more liable to disappointment, misfortune and unhappiness, than those who give up their fate to chance and take the goods and evils of fortune as they come, without making happiness their study, or misery their foresight. — Fanny Burney

Oh! the wisdom, the foresight and the hindsight and the rightsight and the leftsight, the northsight and the southsight, and the eastsight and the westsight that appeared in that august assembly. — John Adams

You know what happens to me! — Satoshi Kon

All people, entrepreneurs as well as non-entrepreneurs, look askance upon any profits earned by other people. Envy is a common weakness of men. People are loath to acknowledge the fact that they themselves could have earned profits if they had displayed the same foresight and judgment the successful businessman did. — Ludwig Von Mises

In the financial markets, hindsight is forever 20/20, but foresight is legally blind. And thus, for most investors, market timing is a practical and emotional impossibility. — Benjamin Graham

The foresight of financial experts was, as so often, a poor guide to the future. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Fear is the mother of foresight. — Thomas Hardy

When you're drowning, you don't say 'I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,' you just scream. — John Lennon

The Zankli Sacred Prayer: Oh God, I bring before you your children you have gifted with the light. Bring unto them what is yours to give, your to provide, and yours to understand. Bless them with the joy of goodness, and deliver unto them longevity, wisdom and foresight. — M.J. Duff

I think only an idiot can be an atheist. We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place. — Christian B. Anfinsen

Can anything be more idiotic than certain people who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves officiously preoccupied in order to improve their lives; they spend their lives in organizing their lives. They direct their purposes with an eye to a distant future. But putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune's control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? — Seneca.

Work done is of more consequence for the future than the foresight of an angel. — George MacDonald

Gandalf chose to come himself, and he was the first to be lost,' answered Gimli. 'His foresight failed him.' 'The counsel of Gandalf was not founded on foreknowledge of safety, for himself or for others,' said Aragorn. 'There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark. But — J.R.R. Tolkien

You can't be conferred with a glory you never configured your mind to come to. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

What helps luck is a habit of watching for opportunities, of having a patient but restless mind, of sacrificing one's ease or vanity, or uniting a love of detail to foresight, and of passing through hard times bravely and cheerfully. — Victor Cherbuliez

Through my time in the military and my deployments, I have recognized the importance of having a Commander in Chief who will not only go after those who threaten the safety and security of the American people, but who will also exercise good judgment and foresight in stopping these failed interventionist wars of regime change that have cost our country so much in human lives, untold suffering, and trillions of dollars. — Tulsi Gabbard

Yet we choose to remember history very selectively, favoring foresight over failure. — Thomas Rid

Raising children uses every bit of your being - your heart, your time, your patience, your foresight, your intuition to protect them, and you have to use all of this while trying to figure out how to discipline them. — Nicole Ari Parker

One of the characteristic problems of our time is how to close this gap between capabilities and foresight. — Edward Tenner

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane In proving foresight may be vain The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain For promis'd joy! — Robert Burns

All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days ... nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. — John F. Kennedy

He'd had the foresight to know that a lot of the savages wear store-bought clothes. — Louis L'Amour

How you look at it is pretty much how you'll see it — Rasheed Ogunlaru

But hope is only man's mistrust of the clear foresight of his mind. — Paul Valery

When the king's ministers lack foresight, The king does not rule for long. — Vishnu Sharma

This, it occurred to me, this was the undisciplined human community that, fired by its dull collective wit, now drove the armed nation towards it knew-not-what sort of epic martial cataclysm: a massive flailing organism with all the rectitude and foresight of an untrained puppy.

--In the private letters of Albert Sloane, by permission of the Sloane family. — George Saunders

But as men grow more industrialised and regimented, the kind of delight that is common in children becomes impossible to adults because they are always thinking of the next thing and cannot let themselves be absorbed in the moment. This habit of thinking of the 'next thing' is more fatal to any kind of aesthetic excellence than any other habit of mind that can be imagined, and if art, in any important sense, is to survive it will not be by the foundation of solemn academies, but by recapturing the capacity for wholehearted joys and sorrows which prudence and foresight have all but destroyed. — Bertrand Russell

And why do we worship hindsight (as in the news media's constant rehash of the day, the week, the year) and yet distrust foresight, which actually might make a difference in our lives? — Gavin De Becker

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but foresight is better, especially when it comes to saving life, or some pain! — William Blake

We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foresight of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement. — Edward Abbey

A Leader must possess credibility, imagination, enthusiasm, vision, foresight, a sense of timing, a passion for excellence and be willing to share. — William Rosenberg

Success is about dedication. You may not be where you want to be or do what you want to do when you're on the journey. But you've got to be willing to have vision and foresight that leads you to an incredible end. — Usher

I have been doing technology foresight for a number of years now on the level of scenario design, primarily. I want to become more rigorous with research methodology and statistical methods. I want to shift from creating clever SF scenarios to being a professional forecaster able to make rigorous predictions. — Karl Schroeder

One reason inflation is so destructive is because some people benefit greatly while other people suffer; society is divided into winners and losers. The winners regard the good things that happen to them as the natural result of their own foresight, prudence, and initiative. They regard the bad things, the rise in the prices of the things they buy, as produced by forces outside their control. Almost everyone will say that he is against inflation; what he generally means is that he is against the bad things that have happened to him. — Milton Friedman

Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road. — Karen Blixen

Panic is something that good operations officers plan for. — Tom Clancy

With no navigational skills, her travels became aimless, and after several days she began to experience excruciating hunger, as she had not the foresight to pack food before she set out. She drifted through tiny villages and saw juicy fruits and vegetables growing in the gardens of the peasants, but could not bring herself to beg for food or attempt to steal it. She ate small beetles and grasshoppers, since she had no hunting skills. She chewed on the bitter roots of sassafras trees, which turned her stomach sour but provided a small amount of nourishment. How — Brian Edwards

Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action. — Will Durant

the overriding thought in my mind is that I didn't have the foresight to say goodbye or thank you to the people I love. That sounds corny, I know, but what's wrong with corny? It has its place. — Colin Cotterill

I have not the foresight to predict everything, Rogue. — Elizabeth Carlton

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope. — Alain De Botton

She knew that the word providence meant foresight, the future beheld before it was experienced. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Foresight is good when it is subject to the latter, but it becomes excessive when we are in a hurry to avoid something we fear. We rely more on our own efforts than on those of his Providence, and we think we are doing a great deal by anticipating His orders by our own disorder, which causes us to rely on human prudence rather than on his Word. — Vincent De Paul

If it is in any case most difficult to choose a life work - since upon the choice, whether it be right or wrong, will depend the good or bad fortune of the rest of one's life - how much care and foresight must he who would enter upon this art employ before he dares to decide. For musicians and poets are born such. You must try to remember whether even in childhood you felt a strong natural inclination to this art and whether you were deeply moved by the beauty of concords — Fux, Johann Joseph

Pity is often a reflection of our own evils in the ills of others. It is a delicate foresight of the troubles into which we may fall. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers: it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe. Who paid the expenses of the noble enterprise I don't know... — Jospeh Conrad

The mind can never foresee its own advance — Friedrich A. Hayek

Foresight is a virtue and averts many a misfortune. — Johanna Spyri

It is in vain to hope to guard against events too mighty for human foresight or precaution, and it would be idle to object to a government because it could not perform impossibilities. — Alexander Hamilton

Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones. Before — Emily Bronte

If socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the State should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree. This is done now; we desire that it be done better. There is however, a point on this road that must not be passed; it is the point where governmental foresight would step in to replace individual foresight and thus destroy it. — Frederic Bastiat

Only a female could be as calculating and have the foresight that destiny requires,' the gypsy explained. 'Now fate is a man,' he went on, 'no planning, just go with the flow and see what tomorrow brings. — Traci Harding

May ya have the hindsight ta know where you've been, the foresight ta know where where you're going, and the insight ta know when you're going too far... — Shirley Bourget

Often a certain abdication of prudence and foresight is an element of success. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our bodies have five senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. But not to be overlooked are the senses of our souls: intuition, peace, foresight, trust, empathy. The differences between people lie in their use of these senses; most people don't know anything about the inner senses while a few people rely on them just as they rely on their physical senses, and in fact probably even more. — C. JoyBell C.

Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems. — Benjamin Franklin

I have a European Fanclub that's based in Holland, and I had to have that President of the Fanclub to get me a number of recordings that I hadn't had the foresight to collect myself. — Gloria Gaynor

May you have the hindsight to know where you've been, the foresight to know where you are going, and the insight to know when you have gone too far. — Heather Lyons

Every invention began as an imagination. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

In 1979, for example, Microsoft gave Boeing Commercial Airplane Co. the right to buy any Microsoft product for $50 per copy, until the end of time. Today most Microsoft applications sell in the $300 to $500 range, ten years from now they may cost thousands each. — Robert X. Cringely

Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people - I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter. The greatest hindrance to living is expectancy, which depends upon the morrow and wastes to-day. You dispose of that which lies in the hands of Fortune, you let go that which lies in your own. — Seneca.

Hindsight is good, foresight is better; but second sight is best of all. — Evan Esar

We can predict the present without having to know everything about the past. — John D. Barrow

A leader should be a visionary and have more foresight than an employee. — Jack Ma

The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They, too, have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight. — Daniel Gilbert

I am firmly convinced to-day that, generally speaking, it is in youth that men lay the essential groundwork of their creative thought, wherever that creative thought exists. I make a distinction between the wisdom of age- which can only arise from the greater profundity and foresight that are based on the experiences of a long life- and the creative genius of youth, which blossoms out in thoughts and ideas with inexhaustible fertility, without being able to put these into practice immediately, because of their very superabundance. These furnish the building materials and plans for the future; and it is from them that age takes the stones and builds the edifice, unless the so-called wisdom of the years may have smothered the creative genius of youth. — Adolf Hitler

It's a bit counter-intuitive to think about the future in terms of the past. But ... I've learned an important trick: to develop foresight, you need to practice hindsight. Technologies, cultures, and climates may change, but our basic human needs and desires - to survive, to care for our families, and to lead happy, purposeful lives - remain the same.' p 5 — Jane McGonigal

Seeking revenge: what a lack of foresight. — Natalie Clifford Barney

We know that freedom has many dimensions. It is the right of the man who tills the land to own the land; the right of the workers to join together to seek better conditions of labor; the right of businessmen to use ingenuity and foresight to produce and distribute without arbitrary interference in a truly competitive economy. — Robert Kennedy

I credit Google for having the foresight to identify threats to its main business of selling advertising against search results. The potential loss of market share in the mobile space led them to the Android acquisition. — Barry Ritholtz

Ultimately, we are all products of the experiences we have and the decisions we make as children, and it remains a peculiar detail of human condition that something as precious as the future is entrusted to us when we possess so little foresight. Perhaps that's what makes hindsight so intriguing. When you're young the future is a blank canvas, but looking back you are always able to see the big picture. — Simon Pegg

No one knows the future, but the present offers clues and hints on its direction. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Do you think, if Columbus had stood on the bow of his ship, looked at the New World and understood everything to come, all the disease and death and betrayal, all the ugliness, all the blood - do you think he would have embraced it, called it paradise? — Catherynne M Valente

When it comes to the Yellow Races overruning the world, you may laugh ... [The Chinese] have neither the foresight or endurance to overrun any white country in any way except by intermarriage. One American marine could stand off a great many yellowmen without much effort. — L. Ron Hubbard

It is only the surprise and newness of the thing which makes that misfortune terrible which by premeditation might be made easy to us. For that which some people make light by sufferance, others do by foresight. — Seneca The Younger

There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn't want to give up. It allows you to have foresight. I may not be as empathetic. It's hard to figure out the difference between pathology and personality. — Scott Stossel

I still have a lot of those depressive thoughts, but now I have the foresight to tell myself, 'Don't think like that,' and things seem better. — Juliana Hatfield

Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! (Brigadier-General Henry Wilson, on being challenged in 1910 about the likelihood of a European war) — Max Hastings

He who has foresight has more than two eyes. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Hindsight. It's like foresight without a future. — Kevin Kline