HINDSIGHT QUOTES

quotations about hindsight

All that lovely hindsight doesn't mean that you should go back to what was.

TIFFANY JOHNSON

Find Your Happily Ever After


In retrospect it becomes clear that hindsight is definitely overrated!

ALFRED E. NEUMAN

Mad Magazine


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

CHRISTIAN D. LARSON

The Optimist Creed


Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

BILLY WILDER

attributed, Wit and Wisdom of the Moviemakers


Of all the forms of wisdom, hindsight is by general consent the least merciful, the most unforgiving.

JOHN FLETCHER

attributed, Words of Wisdom


Wisdom in hindsight is cold comfort to those who lost mightily.

ERIK GERDING

Law, Bubbles, and Financial Regulation


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


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


I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.

SOPHOCLES

Oedipus Rex

Tags: Sophocles


To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago."

ROGER ZELAZNY

Sign of the Unicorn

Tags: Roger Zelazny


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

Tags: Milan Kundera


Hindsight is an exact science.

GUY BELLAMY

The Sinner's Congregation


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