Retrospective Clarity Quotes

Odd that the future should be so difficult to bring into focus when the past, uninvited, offered itself up so easily for inspection.

You know, there’s a philosopher who says, “As you live your life, it appears to be anarchy and chaos, and random events, non-related events, smashing into each other and causing this situation or that situation, and then, this happens, and it’s overwhelming, and it just looks like what in the world is going on ? And later, when you look back at it, it looks like a finely crafted novel. But at the time, it don’t.

Often continuity is visible only in retrospect.

The best early-stage venture capital investments appear obvious in retrospect; however, very few of them are actually obvious when you make them.

Things always become obvious after the fact

My fate has been that what I undertook was fully understood only after the fact.

I wanted to learn Latin and Greek and become a poet and acquire power over language. I only understand this clearly in retrospect, that my ability to study came from a hunger to learn all the resources of articulation.

you know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious.

Politicians and journalists share the same fate in that they often understand tomorrow the things they talk about today.