alternative outcomes Quotes

At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could've taken. I don't think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder.

As one looks back over history it is interesting to speculate on what would have happened if individuals or nations had acted differently in certain crises. I often wonder if these speculations will serve to give any of us more courage in facing new situations!

Should have. Would have. Could have. Didn't.

... even when we find not what we seek, we find something as well worth seeking as what we missed.

Had I not gone to Japan in 1986, had I stayed home and majored in English literature as I'd intended to do, I might indeed have become an investment banker, an outcome that perhaps would have proved a more severe blow to the health of the U.S. economy than to the history of the novel.

The history of things that didn't happen has never been written.

History does not disclose to us its alternatives.

Whenever you look back and say "if" you know you're in trouble. There is no such thing as "if". The only thing that matters is what really happened.

I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.

Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.

History isn't just what happened, but what happened to whom and why and what would have been different if the cast of characters had been different.

In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was.

Sometimes the kids come up with better endings than the real story.

Whatever happens in a government could have happened differently, and it usually would have been better if it had.

I think that the "what if" game is what you guys get to do. I don't have to do that. I hate the "what if" game. I'm such a believer in everything happening the way it's supposed to happen.

In counterfactual history, nothing is certain.

We often regret we did not do otherwise, when that very otherwise would, in all probability, have done for us.