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.