Quotes & Sayings About Hindsight

Yes there are times when you regret your decisions but we all have to make them without the power of hindsight. — Roland Gift

I stay true to my lyrics. If I go back and look at them in hindsight, the emotions I had when I wrote them have passed. It feels unjustified to change them. — Paloma Faith

In hindsight everything is much clearer. — Bart Cummings

For historians, hindsight can be a treacherous ally. Enabling us to trace the hidden patterns of past events, it beguiles us with the mirage of inevitability, the assumption that different outcomes lay beyond the limits of the possible. — Eric Foner

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. — David Beckham

I grew up believing in God without having a clue what He is like. I called myself a Christian, was pretty involved in church, and tried to stay away from all of the things that 'good Christians' avoid- drinking, drugs, sex, swearing. Christianity was simple: fight your desires in order to please God. Whenever I failed (which was often), I'd walk around feeling guilty and distant from God. In hindsight, I don't think my church's teachings were incorrect, just incomplete. My view of God was narrow and small. — Francis Chan

They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown. — Joseph J. Ellis

I began demonstrating against serious culture. In hindsight, the actual course of events has been very humiliating for me, because no one picked up on the intellectual critique I made. — Henry Flynt

Our view of history diminishes the reality of the past. We concentrate on the historic event as something that has happened, and in so doing we ignore it as a moment which, at the time, is happening. — Ian Mortimer

I didn't appreciate the moment as much as I should have while living it, but I can attribute that to my poor emotional state and hindsight. — S.A. Tawks

The psychiatric ward was a really creepy place and, hindsight being 20/20, the creepiest thing about it was that I truly belonged there. — Steve-O

I told personal stories the way [Bill] Cosby would spin a yarn for ten minutes. I think in hindsight it works better as a long story than as a condensed monologue. — Ed Helms

Problems are providence in disguise. All things good and bad, problematic and praise worthy are providential-God conceived, sustaining and guiding. With the right perspective, patience, hard work and hindsight, we can push through, beyond our pain, to a place of realization... that our troubles are simply part of the hands of the Potter who molds the very essence of our human spirit. As long as we breathe, we will be shaped by our problems but it's our response that truly defines us. ~Jason Versey — Jason Versey

Hindsight is a beautiful thing, mage. The past is for the memory, the present is for the mind. — Ben Galley

In hindsight, I must have been looking for a way to write about Jewishness that somehow managed to minimize irony and self-deprecation. — Zachary Lazar

One little thing led to another. One success, one particular challenge, could spur thoughts about another product, or a different iteration of an existing product, or a whole new channel of revenue. As Steve liked to say, "You can only connect the dots of how things really happened in hindsight. — Brent Schlender

'Story of My Life' was essentially a two-man musical play. In hindsight, I don't know if there was room for a two-man musical on Broadway. — Will Chase

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. — Billy Wilder

I believed myself to be ready then; now, with the hindsight brought by greater age, I see myself for the naive and inexperienced young woman I was. We all begin in such a manner, though. There is no quick route to experience. — Marie Brennan

But hindsight was no benefit to the ill-prepared. — Andrea K. Host

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

Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled. — Charles Mackay

I was cursed with age, really. You do that stupid thing at 12 years old when you say something and it kind of sticks with you for the rest of your life. So, I believe I said I wanted to be a fishery manager. In hindsight, I think acting could be a better route. — Tom Felton

Another Quarter Pounder sometimes seems like a good idea- but I always regret later. Only in hindsight do we see how God would not let us settle for our well-intentioned but limited desires, but called us- sometimes weeping and kicking- to something more enduring and satisfying. — Christopher Ruddy

In hindsight, I see the great value of family and how it moulded my life and kept me together. So now family means everything to me. — Jimmy Cliff

If you're an artist, it's OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you; you breathe it. — Anton Corbijn

The dead know everything, but don't give a damn. — Joanne Harris

Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement. — Harlan Coben

Your guess [about the future of technology] is as good as mine. The only thing I'm sure of is (a) most of the predictions I hear are almost certainly wrong, and (b) the things that will turn out to be important will come as a surprise, even though in hindsight they'll seem perfectly obvious. — Steve Krug

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

Those who made the decisions with imperfect knowledge will be judged in hindsight by those with considerably more information at their disposal and time for reflection. — Donald Rumsfeld

Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn't have when you're actually living it. It's as though the whole thing were designed to be understood in hindsight, as though you'll never know the meaning of your experiences until you've had enough of them to provide reference. — Donald Miller

The historian is a prophet looking backwards. — Friedrich Von Schlegel

For a lot of the time I was in Berkeley, I was single. I was living in a kind of collegiate apartment by myself - it was like a protracted summer vacation. So at least in hindsight, I have gloomy emotions attached to Berkeley, whereas I started coming to New York because I was dating someone, and it was very exciting and romantic. — Adrian Tomine

My father had a lifelong terror, phobia whatever, about hospitals. Makes a lot of sense in hindsight. He was so scared of doctors, he passed that on to me. That's what parents exist for: to pass their phobias on generation to generation. — Jackie Kay

I have always wondered what it would have been like for an outsider to have witnessed firsthand the gathering dark of Hitler's rule. How did the city look, what did one hear, see, and smell, and how did diplomats and other visitors interpret the events occurring around them? Hindsight tells us that during that fragile time the course of history could so easily have been changed. Why, then, did no one change it? Why did it take so long to recognize the real danger posed by Hitler and his regime? — Erik Larson

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

In hindsight, the grand hero ideal she always thought he encompassed chipped away and all that remained was a cheap imitation. He embodied everything she'd hidden from in her adolescence. Boyfriends, relationships, and sex all led to disaster. Being alone was better than shattered and broken like mother: disenchanted with the life she'd been forced into. — Callie Hunter

There is no going back. There is no revival of our humans. There is no erasure of our horrors. No healing except of time and she is a vengeful mistress, leaving scars that are forever. But there also is no proof of foreknowledge, only of twenty-twenty hindsight. You guessed. You did not know. Knowing is only for God. — Faith Hunter

I screeched with frustration, which in hindsight is never okay when there are people trying to kill you. — Jessica Fortunato

Cliff Stearns talks about what he did to Planned Parenthood, making Solyndra a household name - why didn't he do this sooner? Why didn't he see it coming? It's the oversight committee, not the hindsight committee. — Ted Yoho

How the hell do I know what I find incredible? Credibility is an expanding field ... Sheer disbelief hardly registers on the face before the head is nodding with all the wisdom of instant hindsight. — Tom Stoppard

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

With the hindsight of the worldly experience she had since acquired, it was clear to Maisie that Dame Constance had suffered fools, if not gladly, then with gracious ease. — Jacqueline Winspear

In all your life, only a few moments matter. Mostly you never get a good look at them except in hindsight, long after they've zipped past you: the moment when you decided whether to talk to that girl, slow down on that blind bend, stop and find that condom. I was lucky, I guess you could call it. I got to see one of mine face-to-face, and recognize it for what it was. — Tana French

Which is better: to dare to look directly into the blinding present, no matter how painful, or to await the detachment of hindsight -- which, being less painful, is more objective? — Thomas Buergenthal

If in this narrative I have not yet paid Queen Sophia adequate consideration, particularly given the unrelenting domination the woman would soon claim over every single element of my life, I offer this simple yet honest explanation: for fifteen unbroken years, my mother had toiled to protect me from the woman. It is remarkable, as I reflect upon my childhood, how utterly unaware I was of this situation while it transpired, the truth coming to my notice only in despondent hindsight. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Is it true that we can count the moments in which something really happens in our lives? Do we notice it right away, or only in hindsight? — Jan-Philipp Sendker

Hindsight must surely be the most useless function of the human brain, torturing yourself over the unalterable past. — Peter F. Hamilton

Maybe everything would have been different. Hindsight is a mocking bitch for sure. — Tiffany King

Collecting intelligence information is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You know, in hindsight It's great. The problem is there's a million dots at the time. — Louis Freeh

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

Washington's task was to transform the improbable into the inevitable. — Joseph J. Ellis

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

With twenty-twenty hindsight I could solve every fucking problem, couldn't I? — Lilith Saintcrow

With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn't know that then. — Ken Follett

He doesn't have anything like wisdom of age or hindsight. He's a biased historian of self, an emotional revisionist. We all are, for the most part. — Marc Maron

Why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? — Bernhard Schlink

Hindsight sucked. In fact hindsight should be assassinated. — Samantha Young

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

Was happiness (which was perhaps achieved not by getting what you wanted, but rather, by obtaining what you didn't know you wished for until it was in hand) a hologram that would continually change appearance with the slightest shift of perspective? Or maybe happiness by definition was a temporary state of being recognizable only in hindsight. It was impossible to catch what always managed to be overrun and end up in the rear view mirror. — Roy L. Pickering Jr.

In hindsight, that time out of football gives you the hunger to want to get back to basics and play football. — Alan Smith

You know your country has a checkered past when you find yourself sitting around pondering the humanitarian upside of sticking with the British Empire. — Sarah Vowell

Hindsight has taught me that there is a ravenous, invisible twin haunting each of us. Despite "good works" and selfless sacrifice for noble causes, without unremitting vigilance, even tiny indulgences will betray high aims and deflect nourishment to this parasitic companion. Unfortunately, not even hindsight frees us from the consequences of such indulgence. Emmett — Peter Coyote

There was what people called "present bias" - the tendency, when making a decision, to undervalue the future in relation to the present. There was "hindsight bias" - which he thought of as the tendency for people to look at some outcome and assume it was predictable all along. The — Michael Lewis

Hey! Remember the '90s?
The Clintons were in office, everybody was using AOL, Will Ferrell and Cheri Oteri did "the Cheerleaders" on SNL, and everybody thought Oasis was fantastic.
In hindsight, we were all a bunch of potato-salad-eating jackasses. — Julie Klausner

She relived the frantic shopping and packing, the last teary gatherings with friends, the fear of a faceless roommate, the terror of academic failure. She also relived the excitement, because, in hindsight, going to college had been the single most pivotal point in her life. — Barbara Delinsky

Presidents don't have the benefit of hindsight. You have to make difficult decisions based on the information that's before you at that moment. — Marco Rubio

In hindsight, I have no idea why he was ever with me. He thought highly of my breasts. And ... that's it, I think. — Emma Forrest

Change appears to us mysterious because it is invisible. It is impossible to see a tree grow tall or a man grow old, except with the precarious imagination of hindsight. A tree is small, and later it is tall. A man is young, and later he is old. A people are at peace, and later they are at war. In each case, the intermediate states are at once infinitely many and infinitely complex, which is why they exceed our finite perceptions. — Daniel Tammet

You'd think hindsight would do us some good
But all it does sometimes
Is add glass to the kaleidoscope — J.D. Estrada

In hindsight, though, I might have overdone it by adding that flour, which means before I depart for Abigail's cottage I need to tidy up this room." "If you're moving out, I'm moving with you," Thaddeus said, slipping up beside Millie and taking hold of her hand. Elizabeth was the next to move. She reached out and put her arm around Millie's middle, leaning in to rest her head against Millie's side. "I'm coming too," she said as she snuggled closer right as Millie smiled and placed a quick kiss on top of Elizabeth's paste-covered head. Everett's heart immediately took to the unusual act of lurching, no doubt due to the sight of Millie's understated affection. Ladies of society always made a big production out of kissing their children when company was present, but Millie . . . Her kiss had been the real thing, a show of regard for a child who'd caused her no small amount of trouble. Expecting — Jen Turano

Much of our understanding of God's action in our lives in achieved in hindsight. When a particular crisis or event in our life has passed we cry out in astonishment like Jacob, 'The Lord is in this place and I never knew it. — Sheila Cassidy

Hindsight is 20-20. — Ed Catmull

In hindsight, I know that high school is a festering pit of boredom and hormones, not to be taken as seriously as it seemed while I was there. It is earthly purgatory before you enter the better parts of your life: you've got one foot in heaven and the other in hell. — Alida Nugent

I went to high school in Lexington, Massachusetts, which in hindsight was very nice. — Eugene Mirman

Only in hindsight do we understand how God intended a problem for good. — Rick Warren

People change, though, especially after they are dead. — Margaret Atwood

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

Beverly once read a science magazine article about bioluminescence, the natural glow emitted by organisms like fireflies and jellyfish, but she knows the dead also give off a strange illumination, a phosphor that can permanently damage the eyes of the living. Necroluminescence - the light of the vanished. A hindsight produced by the departed body. Your failings backlit by the death of your loved ones. — Karen Russell

There used to be Boy Scout troops on Mars; it makes sense if you think about it. I got my badge in knots, among other things. That was a lifetime ago, but it's surprising how much of the Boy Scout curriculum is useful after the apocalypse. Scratch that. It's not surprising at all. In hindsight, it seems like the Boy Scouts is an end-times preparation service. — Branden Frankel

I suppose it's true that most great television, literature, and other forms of high art (and basic cable) benefit from a little hindsight. 'M.A.S.H.' comes to mind. So does 'The Iliad.' — Kevin Bleyer

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

Hindsight bias makes surprises vanish. — Daniel Kahneman

The experience of redemption is to see differently in looking back," Reinders observes. "It is hindsight. — Anonymous

I found the concept of hindsight bias fascinating, and incredibly important to management. One of the toughest problems a CEO faces is convincing managers that they should take on risky projects if the expected gains are high enough. Their managers worry, for good reason, that if the project works out badly, the manager who championed the project will be blamed whether or not the decision was a good one at the time. Hindsight bias greatly exacerbates this problem, because the CEO will wrongly think that whatever was the cause of the failure, it should have been anticipated in advance. And, with the benefit of hindsight, he always knew this project was a poor risk. What makes the bias particularly pernicious is that we all recognize this bias in others but not in ourselves. — Richard H. Thaler

But that's hindsight for you: never there when you need it. — Janet Givens

Regrets are like molecules. We're all made up of a lot of them. They are elemental. Building blocks. The foundations of memory. You can dawdle in the past, allow it to shadow you, or you can walk forward into the light of tomorrow.But you can't altogether disregard what has already been- byways chosen, detours taken. The misbegotten decisions you can never reverse, but only by sorting through them can you find where you took the wrong turns and gain proper perspective. Time is a parabolic lens, bringing hindsight into focus. — Ellen Hopkins

Beginnings are easier to find in hindsight — Natalie Corbett Sampson

And what did you never get to do, Emma Smallwood?" he asked lightly, brushing the tears from her face. "Nothing that really matters, in hindsight." She shrugged. "Though I would have liked to travel. And perhaps encourage Aunt Jane to live her life. Live enough for the both of us." "No ordinary dreams? Of marriage, perhaps? A family?" She ducked her head. "Perhaps." Tears filled her eyes once more. He cupped her face in both of his hands and kissed her again. — Julie Klassen

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

It's hard to see a river all at once, especially in the mountains. Down on the plains, rivers run in their course as straightforward as time, channeled toward the sea. But up in the headwaters, a river isn't a point where you stand. In the beginnings of the river, you teeter on the edge of a hundred tiny watersheds where one drop of water is always tipping the balance from one stream to another. History changes with each tiny event, shaping an outcome that we can only fully grasp in hindsight. And that view changes as we move farther downstream. — Lynn Culbreath Noel

It's rather an exhilarating feeling. It's 6 or 7 when you get up and go out into the fields wearing your Wellingtons or high boots. You know that at this very hour half the nation does the same thing, which gives you, with the benefit of hindsight, a satisfaction in doing those things, too, a knowledge, a sense of the nation. I was a city boy until then. — Joseph Brodsky

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

Distraught with the comprehension of his demise, a shovel stood dormant, in the ditch of her own digging. Now sheltered from the glare of greed and ambition, were the distasteful thoughts sprinkled in fool's gold. — Don Swann II

I once called the head of a network a liar. In hindsight, I should have called him an incompetent liar. — Steven Levitan

Hindsight is wonderful. It's always very easy to second guess after the fact. — Helen Reddy

The greater number of a man's errors come before him disguised under the specious form of necessity; then, after error has been committed in a moment of excitement, of delirium, or of fear, we see that we might have avoided and escaped it. — Alexandre Dumas

Every valuable creative idea must always be logical in hindsight. If it were not, we would never be able to see its value. — Edward De Bono

And obviously, with hindsight now, now knowing what went on in the company, it would have been absolutely appropriate back then for us to have the chief executive of the company, most senior person in the United Kingdom, come and answer for the policy they were pursuing. And we ducked that, and frankly that's a failure of Parliament. — Tom A. Watson