Top 111 Hindsight Quotes

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

Hindsight is wonderful. It’s always very easy to second guess after the fact.

In hindsight, I’d love to be undefeated still, but that’s not what this sport is.

Hindsight is the historian’s necessary vice.

‘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.

People can do all kinds of things that maybe aren’t wise in hindsight because of jealousy.

‘Balls of Fury’ was a 45-day shoot when it probably – hindsight being 20/20 – probably should’ve been a 75-day shoot with all the ping-pong action.

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

I always enjoyed movies and in hindsight I realise how captivating they were to me.

I have questioned myself about the brutality in the last few novels. Actually in ‘The Leopard,’ in hindsight, I feel I went a little bit too far with screaming blood. There are a couple of scenes that I regret and wish I had the chance to rewrite. ‘Phantom’ has less blood.

Maybe in hindsight the move to Sauber – not to disregard that year – but maybe if I’d stayed at Force India, that could have been a change to my career.

Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.

Somebody once asked me, ‘What do you do?’ and I flippantly answered ‘I’m a cultural engineer.’ With hindsight, I kind of am – but if I got too self-conscious about it, it wouldn’t work.

I was reading scripts, doing coverage, for CAA. Reading hundreds and hundreds of scripts across the board, from blind submissions to ‘Brokeback Mountain’. It was not always a pleasant task but something, in hindsight, I’m glad I did.

In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.

Major organizational changes create uncertainty. But the point is to move quickly – faster than you are comfortable – because in hindsight, you will always wish you had made changes even sooner.

Have you ever had that moment when you looked back on something and said, ‘Well, gosh, that seems obvious now… why didn’t I see it then?’ I like to call this the Face Palm Epiphany. Oh, hindsight, you magical, humbling thing.

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20 – 20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go.

On hindsight, I feel I should have given more time to sports. But I really got bitten by the acting bug.

I grew up in Ohio, where civil-rights accomplishments had already begun to accelerate before Martin Luther King appeared. In hindsight, we know that many people, black and white, were instrumental in changing the Jim Crow status quo on all levels.

Hindsight bias makes surprises vanish.

‘Mixtape’ sounds retro! I used to make lots of mixed tapes. It was one of those ’90s things – every girl gave them to her best friend. I remember exchanging a few with a boy on a bus when I was 14. I thought he hated me, but in hindsight, maybe he was in love with me, because he gave me the best music.

From as far back as I can remember, I was always insecure about my looks, whether it was my flat chest, my skinny legs, or how to cope with my body as it changed. With hindsight, I can see I was different. I was given a body that worked for photographic modelling and a photogenic face.

There’s always things we could have done better, and it’s easier with hindsight.

As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.

I was 13 years old at music school talking to my teacher. I can’t quite remember what it was I was trying to describe, but I do remember my music teacher saying to me, ‘Do you have synesthesia?’ In hindsight, it seems a little presumptuous of her to think a little boy in Essex would know what synesthesia was.

What I didn’t realize until much later, in hindsight, was I had subconsciously been choosing projects where the woman was in charge of her own destiny.

There’s always things we could have done better, and it’s easier with hindsight.

I’ve had a lot of books rejected in my time. My first novel, which didn’t get published, was, with hindsight, crashingly dull.

We just assumed that Walter Cronkite was unbiased. In hindsight, it is clear that Walter Cronkite was biased and that he used feigned objectivity as the cudgel to change the American narrative from being a right of center one to being a left of center one.

Hindsight is the historian’s necessary vice.

In hindsight, if I could go back in time and relay a message to my younger self, I would tell him to work on his time keeping, and that the job of a drummer is not to be the one that gets noticed the most on stage, or to be the fastest, or the loudest. Above all, it is to be the timekeeper.

This is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, but I think it once again points out how very important style of leadership, that is the way he does what he does, is to his perception.

I was in New York City for September 11th, and I was there for the 2003 blackout. I think in hindsight, you get a real perspective as to how unique those moments of crisis are in a place like New York City.

I try to live in the present. I learn from my mistakes in an effort not to repeat them, but I remain totally focused on today and tomorrow. Many of my mistakes turned out to be incredible opportunities for growth, both professionally and personally, and therefore, in hindsight, they were deeply valuable.

It’s difficult to choose a Word of the Year in the year that you’re in. It’s one of those things that hindsight makes more apparent. It’s like looking at pictures from 10 years ago, and you notice the flannel and the ripped jeans. At the time, it didn’t look to you like a real fashion trend.

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

Hindsight is always 20/20, but I imagine a lot of married and divorced people have insights to share about how they felt during their engagement.

Hindsight is the most dangerous thing imaginable for me. I imagine that’s the case for most filmmakers. And I would love to be a filmmaker who was an exception to that rule, but I’m certainly not.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

I was reading scripts, doing coverage, for CAA. Reading hundreds and hundreds of scripts across the board, from blind submissions to ‘Brokeback Mountain’. It was not always a pleasant task but something, in hindsight, I’m glad I did.

Art is made in hindsight.

When we revel in hindsight, we have a tendency to embellish. We weave romantic and poetic fibres into the gaps in our memory.

When I first left Nike to go work with LeBron and manage him, I was really bullish about managing other athletes. I really wanted to get more athletes besides LeBron and build this big management practice. And in hindsight that was a mistake.

You can’t operate by hindsight.

I thought my early attempts at cooking tofu went well, but, in hindsight, I realize that’s because I was cooking for hungry, vegetarian college students.

There’s a lot of clarity in hindsight.

Hindsight does always serve the purpose of putting you in the right, and if you don’t have it, you find yourself very often in the wrong.

I think bubbles are things people see with 20/20 hindsight. If you look at any particular period where prices go up and then they go down, you will always find people who predicted that they would go down. Those are the people you pay attention to.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

I don’t think me walking away from modeling was scary for me. In hindsight, I think it was very risky, when you talk about risk. Because it paid the bills.

In hindsight, my darkest time came when I was an idol trainee. My future was uncertain and I always had to ask myself, ‘Will I be able to debut?’ It was physically and mentally exhausting sometimes.

As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.

‘A Burglar’s Guide to the City’ makes disparate connections seem obvious in hindsight, and my worldview is altered a little bit more, and far for the better, as a result. We’ll never know, but I suspect Donald Westlake would have enjoyed it – and perhaps been a little unsettled by it, too.

In many cases, if we knew what it would take, we might have thought twice about it, so it’s often wonderful that we don’t have hindsight.

It’s only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.

I would find myself getting deeply distressed if I lived in hindsight all the time.

I don’t regret how I built the Cruiserweight division. Could I have done better? Sure. Absolutely. I’m sure I could have, especially with 20/20 hindsight. I just don’t know of anybody that I talk to that looks back at that division and says, ‘Oh, man, that sucked.’

With any possibly erroneous decision, you can always look back and think you could’ve done something differently – but always with the benefit of hindsight.

My mother used to dress rather risque when I was a kid, and that sort of shocked me. I always thought moms were supposed to wear cardigans and flats, but she was in leather bracelets and minidresses. In hindsight, it was pretty cool, but I’m probably more conservative because of it.

Going back, I wish I could have been in the moment a little bit more. I can’t change it, but hindsight definitely makes me appreciative of the moment now – even if it’s hard, or exhausting, it’s all a part of the experience.

Hindsight can be merciless. People of any given era often look back in time and wonder how their predecessors could have been so dimwitted.

Why do we always have to see black people in hindsight? Why are the Hollywood movies always historical? What about the contemporary image of black people?

With hindsight, if you want to play for Real Madrid, sacrifices need to be made but I was too young to understand. There are things I shouldn’t have said or done. It was early in my career, maybe too early. I didn’t know it was the only Champions League I’d win, for example.

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

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

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.

There’s a lot of clarity in hindsight.

In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In hindsight, I slid into arrogance based upon past success.

Hindsight can be merciless. People of any given era often look back in time and wonder how their predecessors could have been so dimwitted.

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.

In hindsight, I feel like I made the right decision to choose production that would get played on black radio.

In 1987, Merrill Lynch asked me to open a Swiss capital markets operation. I was 27. In hindsight, I was lucky enough to start a business from scratch. And I mean from zero – no offices, even, just a space with walls between different areas. We decided to tear down the walls.

It’s not hard to get into a teen’s head, because it’s all emotions. Their feelings are amplified; you have no luxury of hindsight. If you haven’t had your heart broken before, you don’t know that you’ll be able to get back up again.

We’ve all, you know, done things that we think at the time were bad, but actually, in hindsight, you look back and go, ‘I’m really grateful that happened because I’m a stronger person.’

In hindsight, most of us are also limited with our resources, one has to think about themselves too. So I put it out there that I’m open to collaborations on social media, for brands too, if they deposit money directly into the account of an NGO, I send them.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

At the time, when you’re being dissected and judged it’s pretty brutal, but in hindsight it’s great and – it sounds cliched – you do come out the other side better and stronger.

Newspapers are busily experimenting with different models. Traditionally, and I suspect in hindsight very mistakenly, online news was free. And once given free access readers felt it was their entitlement.

I saw Spurs as being a very good fit for me – but we were unable to agree financial terms with them… With hindsight, though, that was not a disaster.

I always enjoyed movies and in hindsight I realise how captivating they were to me.

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

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.

When I was younger, I made some decisions that I shouldn’t have. And, in hindsight, I’ve almost always been wrong when I haven’t listened to myself.

In hindsight I might have chosen a different path and everything but I still make music, I have a core following that wait for every new album and it’s given me the career I have now.

My parents felt old-fashioned, growing up – they were quite disciplinarian. We went to church and had to learn music, but in hindsight it was a good thing.

In hindsight it may even seem inevitable that a socialist society will starve when it runs out of capitalists.

From as far back as I can remember, I was always insecure about my looks, whether it was my flat chest, my skinny legs, or how to cope with my body as it changed. With hindsight, I can see I was different. I was given a body that worked for photographic modelling and a photogenic face.

I’ve come to recognize what I call my ‘inside interests.’ Telling stories. And helping people tell their stories is a sort of interpersonal gardening. My work at NBC News was to report the news, but in hindsight, I often tried to look for some insight to share that might spark a moment of recognition in a viewer.

When you look back on anything in life, hindsight being 20/20, some things you’d like to have done a little differently.

I feel like, a lot of times, you make music, and you don’t really understand why until with hindsight.

In hindsight, I feel like I made the right decision to choose production that would get played on black radio.

I would find myself getting deeply distressed if I lived in hindsight all the time.

I think the bailouts in 2008 were wrong. And I think, you look in hindsight, it was a lot of misinformation that was presented about the bailouts of the banks in the West.

I believe in love at first sight and hindsight.

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.

I probably would do over the Tom Cruise interview because I’ve thought of so many things I would have said in hindsight.

I wouldn’t trade the childhood we had because, A, It was normal to me, even though, in hindsight, it’s not normal. It felt normal, and I think we maintained a pretty normal healthy attitude towards what we did. And B, I just wouldn’t trade it, the experience that we had and the growth we’ve had.

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.

We sure didn’t feel like refugees, but in hindsight, I guess we were – my father and mother left everything behind to come here – to be safe and give their boys a chance to rebuild a life.

Sometimes, hindsight is 20/20. Sometimes it takes another situation to kind of make you look back at a different situation and really see how good you had it, you know?

Hindsight bias makes surprises vanish.

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.

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.

What seems like a crazy idea today eventually grows. It’s a ‘with hindsight’ thing. One day, someone will turn around and say, ‘That was genius.’

It’s only in hindsight that you realize what indeed your childhood was really like.

We do not agree that hindsight is required. The risks of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional instability, and al-Qaeda activity in Iraq, were each explicitly identified before the invasion.

When I was four, I just wanted to drive, I collected toy cars. Where does that sort of thing come from? In hindsight you go, ‘Oh, liked it because of this.’ Maybe it’s just the wheel.

Most of what we know about human life we know from asking people to remember the past, and as we know, hindsight is anything but 20/20. We forget vast amounts of what happens to us in life, and sometimes memory is downright creative.