Retrospective Analysis Quotes

You cannot see the past that did not happen any more than you can foresee the future.

It was, perhaps, one of those cases in which advice is good or bad only as the event decides.

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.

Though God cannot alter the past, historians can.

A man's memory is bound to be a distortion of his past in accordance with his present interests, and the most faithful autobiography is likely to mirror less what a man was than what he has become.

I see things about the present more clearly when I'm looking through the frame of the past: I think it's very hard to assess the present moment that we are in.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

I write a lot about the past because I really see things clearly in hindsight.

No one in Hollywood really knows what a good idea is before a movie hits the screens. We only know if it's a good idea after it's done.

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

One of the advantages of having to live with JUnit for 8 years is now we can look back and see which decisions we made worked nicely and which we would have done differently.

The world's history is the world's judgment.

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

Judicial judgment must take deep account...of the day before yesterday in order that yesterday may not paralyze today.

Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backward. But then one forgets the other clause - that it must be lived forward. The more one thinks through this clause, the more one concludes that life in temporality never becomes properly understandable, simply because never at any time does one get perfect repose to take the stance - backward.

Weirdly, the past starts to be about something else. It becomes about style in a way that it wasn't about, and I don't mean writing style, but cultural style.

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

You can only understand the present age when it is past.

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

There's a lot to be learned by watching. I think the younger generation could fare a lot better in their game if they could sit down and watch some of the games of the past.

A healthy vision of the future is not possible without an accurate knowledge of the past.

Presidents look back seeking both inspiration for the future and sanction for the moment

It's so difficult to be conscious of a development of a style. You find yourself writing in a certain style, and the analysis of how you came to it can only ever be applied retroactively. You're never conscious of why you're producing it.

In a hundred years the historian will understand me better.