Hindsight Quotes

Hindsight is not only clearer than perception-in-the-moment but also unfair to those who actually lived through the moment.

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.

Hindsight is the historian's necessary vice.

The tradition of freedom of the high seas has its roots in an era when there were too few people to seriously violate the oceans - but in hindsight that era ended some 150 years ago.

Hindsight plays tricks on our minds.

But history is a faithless teller whose cruel recourse to hindsight makes fools of its actors.

The most fertile source of insight is hindsight.

With the benefit of hindsight, the content of that letter has bothered me since her death.

I write a lot about the past because I really see things clearly in hindsight.

Whether it is successful or not is not the exercise for me. It is not up to me. It is out of my hands now. I am not going to in two years have hindsight and say I made a big mistake.

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.

The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.

Lucky risk takers use hindsight to reinforce their feeling that their gut is very wise. Hindsight also reinforces others' trust in that individual's gut.

Hindsight, usually looked down upon, is probably as valuable as foresight, since it does include a few facts.

Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

Staff has a genius for sitting on its brains and coming up with perfect hindsight.

We had no idea that this show [Daredevil] would be as popular as it was, but with the benefit of hindsight, one thing I can say is that I think that was a really, really smart move.

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

Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise.

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.

Mr. [Richard M.] Nixon never has anything but hindsight.

hindsight is gained through experience

As I thought about that, I had to wonder: What will we know better about tomorrow? Who cares? Hindsight is useless.

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

Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.

As time passes, you will look back with twenty-twenty hindsight, and you will say, 'Thank God He did not answer my prayers' or 'Thank God He answered my prayers,' whichever the case may be.

With hindsight, it is always easy to blame everyone else.

Mom could say that in hindsight, but it seemed to me that when you were in the middle of something, it was awful hard to figure out what part of it was God's will and what wasn't.

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.

To me the question of inspiration is an exercise in hindsight. The truth is inspiration is mysterious at the time. I don't think it's ever a rational process.

But everyone's an expert with the virtue of hindsight . . . .

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.

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.

Hindsight is common and bland as boiled potatoes.

I'm defining [presidential courage] pretty narrowly. It's not only taking a big political risk but it's also the risk that in the hindsight of history, people think it's wise.

You can't help but... with 20/20 hindsight, go back and say, 'Look, had we done something different, we probably wouldn't be facing what we are facing today.'

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.

I'm always surprised when the corporate world does stupid things, because they're often not very stupid in hindsight.

I would be hard-pressed to look back at anything that I have done in my career and not say, "I would have done that a little different" because hindsight is 20/20.

A moment of disruption is where the conversation about disruption often begins, even though determining that moment is entirely hindsight.

Everything was such a damned nice idea when it was an idea.

No captain with all the hindsight in the world can predict how the wicket is going to play

Hindsight provides new eyes.

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

It is easy to be wise after the event.

The Battle of Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe

The historian is a prophet looking backwards.

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

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

Retrospect: the sweetener of life.