We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.
With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.
I have an intense dislike of doctrines, because you will always end up eating your words.
Even as you make progress, you need the discipline to keep from backtracking and sabotaging the success as it's happening.
If I see an ending, I can work backward.
As any traveller knows, heading elsewhere is one thing, getting back quite another.
We need to avoid going down a path where we might find the doors slamming shut behind us.
Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly.
While it can be pleasurable to move speedily through a work of fiction, there's a different sort of pleasure to be had in lingering, backtracking, rereading the same page.
I think multiple levels of undo would be wonderful, too.
I start off but I don't know where I'm going; I try this avenue and that avenue, that turns out to be a dead end, this is a dead end, and so on. The search takes a long time and I have to back-track often.
Hast thou attempted greatnesse? Then go on; Back-turning slackens resolution.
If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever made it.
Going forward seems like retreat.
Someone told me something that stuck with me: 'You have to envision your life, and then go backwards.' I've been living by that motto for a while, so I see where I need to be. Now I'm just backtracking and trying to get back up there.
Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may at last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.
Oppositions usually say ridiculous things and must embarrassingly then ditch untenable positions.
When I look for what I'm going to listen to I go backwards. I'm always going the other way you see. Most people are trying to figure out 'how do I get in the fast lane going that way?'. I'm going in the other direction. I wanna find the oldest thing to do.
Silence moves faster when it's going backward.
There comes a time in every political convention where I eat my words.
I can go back and fall on my head any time.
Milestone! This is a momentous occasion," he tells her cheerily. "It should be witnessed by a friend." She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal back pedal. "Aaaand since no friends are present, I'll have to do.
I believe, firmly, that women are always right. Ah, I should actually rephrase that: I... don't.
When a man eats his words, that's recycling.
I'm not running away from the fact that I had previously said I did not contemplate a major increase, and that was a fair statement of the Government's state of mind at the time I made that.
