Hindsight Bias Quotes

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.

The past always looks better than it was. It’s only pleasant because it isn’t here.

Self-righteousness in retrospect is easy--also cheap.

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

You don’t make decisions in hindsight; you make them in the present. You live and learn.

Never make predictions, especially about the future.

But everyone's an expert with the virtue of hindsight . . . .

If you say something in advance - if you describe a problem as it arises, people always turn on you because they don't want to hear about it. But when it's too late to do anything, they will then turn around and say that you were right. That's human nature.

Chris Davis [of the Davisfunds] has a temple of shame. He celebrates the things they did that lost them a lot of money. What is also needed is a temple of shame squared for things you didn't do that would have made you rich. Forgetting your mistakes is a terrible error if you are trying to improve your cognition. Reality doesn't remind you. Why not celebrate stupidities in both categories?

As not infrequently happens in the affairs of war, it is easier to point out mistakes after they are committed, than to see and avoid them amid the difficulties and dangers by which the military commander is at the moment surrounded.

I always avoid prophesying beforehand, because it is a much better policy to prophesy after the event has already taken place.

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.

The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.

You can't operate by hindsight.

It's very easy for some men and in some cases women to sit back and say with 20-20 hindsight, "Tsk-tsk, should have done more." But it doesn't account for the reality.

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.

Th'invention all admir'd, and each, how he to be th'inventor miss'd; so easy it seem'd once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.

Any 6 year old’s hindsight is better than a President’s foresight.

If you knew what you were doing, that it would hinder you, you wouldn't do it.

I do watch some of my losses, but it just makes me think, 'Well, you know, should have done this; could have done that.' But that's why I don't like watching it. It's a shoulda/coulda/woulda thing.

Being on the outside of something, watching someone make a risky decision, it's so easy to judge someone for that. But when you're in it, it's impossible to see it.

People who think about time travel stories sometimes think that going back in time would be fun because you would have all the information you needed to be much more astute than the people there, when the truth is of course you wouldn't.

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.

When something happens people didn't predict, they find ways to explain it as if it were predictable.

Best not to mix the past with the present. The present paints the past with gold. The past paints the present with lead.