26 quotes found
“To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago.”
“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) t...”
“But all these hints at foreseeing what actually did happen on the French as well as on the Russian side are only conspicuous now because the event has justified them. If the event had not come to p...”
“The Battle of Normandy was won on the beaches of Dieppe”
“It is easy to be wise after the event.”
“Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise”
“In the argument over whether knowledge is power or ignorance is bliss, it seems I've always come down on the side of ignorance. And when that's the side you fall on, you don't realize it until it's...”
“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.”
“Does being true to one's self mean offering the literal truth or the truth that should have been, the truth of the image of one's self? It hardly matters by this time. By this time the border betwe...”
“In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognise such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed...”
“Naturallyand why should I not admit thisI have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run.... I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent even...”
“People change, though, especially after they are dead.”
“To fulfill your vision, you must have hindsight, insight and foresight.”
“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been.”
“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.”
“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 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 ...”
“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 n...”
“I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence.”
