Historical Regret Quotes

In Charleston, more than elsewhere, you get the feeling that the twentieth century is a vast, unconscionable mistake.

I was allowed for many years of my life to work for the greatest son [Adolf Hitler] that my people produced in their 1,000 year history. I regret nothing.

I don't think we would have had to be an occupying power if we had done the right thing in 1991.

The last time you and I sat across a conference table in Potsdam [July-August, 1945], I must confess Sir, I held you in very low regard. I loathed your taking the place of Franklin Roosevelt. I misjudged you badly. Since that time, you more than any other man have saved Western Civilization.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently.

[T]he only thing the United States government ever did about slavery was to abolish it. Perhaps that was a mistake, but I do not feel inclined to apologize for it.

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.

Let us reflect on the obvious but often neglected lesson that state-sanctioned discrimination never looks good in hindsight.

We should have mastered Quebec and been in possession of Canada.

The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe—three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins. He had a thirst for power, a low opinion of man as an individual, and a fear of intellectual honesty. He was a force for evil in the world. His passing, his defeat—a boon to mankind. But thousands died that it might be so. The price for ridding society of bad is always high. Love, Daddy

Aside from the Punic Wars, which I was too young for, I have been blamed for everything.

I did not, I could not and I will never invite Obote, ... This is because Obote is someone who made a lot of mistakes in our history.

Paradoxically, the people and state of Japan living on such moral props were not innocent but had been stained by their own past history of invading other Asian countries.

Vietnam ended a failure: repeatedly, to me, Kissinger described it as his greatest, and most persistent regret. But Congress was more to blame than Kissinger.

I'm so sorry - we had this cottage up in Lake Maxinkuckee, in Culver. I've thought so often of the poor Pottawattomies we took this land away from. They must have loved it so.

I ought to have seized the initiative in 1938 instead of allowing myself to be forced into war in 1939; for war was, in any case, unavoidable. However, you can hardly blame me if the British and the French accepted at Munich every demand I made of them! (14th February 1945)

I could never understand how we could put 120,000 Japanese behind a fence in World War II. I remember being bewildered about that.

Obviously, I would have been happier if Canada had not been conquered in the past by the English, if this part of North America had remained French, but you can't rewrite history.

While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him.

I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.

I think that we have positive moments in our history and negative moments in our history. We incarcerated Japanese Americans in the state of Colorado, in Camp Amache. You could say that's part of our heritage; I would say it's a shameful part of our heritage and not something we should repeat.

Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness.

That happens to a lot of couples. I understand the black history in this country, and regret it, I wish it hadn't happened. See, I also know that it hasn't happened to African-Americans alive today. There isn't one African-American alive today who's treated as three-fifths of a person like it was in the past.

Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still.

The '70s kind of sucked.