79 Retrospective Quotes

Following is our list of retrospective quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about what to say during retrospective.

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Famous Retrospective Quotes

Hindsight is an exact science. - Guy Bellamy

Hindsight is an exact science. — Guy Bellamy

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. - David Beckham

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. — David Beckham

Hindsight is the best insight to foresight — Irish Proverbs

We go forward looking in the rearview mirror. — Marshall McLuhan

it's a good idea to review past mistakes before committing new ones. — Warren Buffett

Hindsight is notably cleverer than foresight. — Chester W. Nimitz

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. - Billy Wilder

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. — Billy Wilder

Hindsight is wonderful. It's always very easy to second guess after the fact. - Helen Reddy

Hindsight is wonderful. It's always very easy to second guess after the fact. — Helen Reddy

We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future. — Marshall McLuhan

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward. — Margaret Fairless Barber

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward. — Margaret Barber

Management by results - like driving a car by looking in rear view mirror. — W. Edwards Deming

You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. — Steve Jobs

Look back, and smile on perils past. — Walter Scott

And why do we worship hindsight (as in the news media's constant rehash of the day, the week, the year) and yet distrust foresight, which actually might make a difference in our lives? — Gavin de Becker

Short Retrospective Quotes

  • One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. — Sigmund Freud
  • Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences. — J. K. Rowling
  • In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible. — Michael McFaul
  • I thought it would be my one and only exhibition so I decided to call it My Major Retrospective. — Tracey Emin
  • It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect. — Robert Louis Stevenson
  • A bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect. — Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. — Paul Theroux
  • Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
  • I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect. — Sophocles
  • There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect. — Haruki Murakami

Retrospective Image Quotes

Retrospective quote One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

Retrospective Work Quotes

I try not to think retrospectively. It's important, as an artist, to look forward, always. I do try to take work that involves some challenge. If you approach a piece of work and you're going, "Yeah, yeah, I can do that," then that's kind of a red flag. — Cillian Murphy

That's why I write, because life never works except in retrospect. You can't control life, at least you can control your version. — Chuck Palahniuk

My business is retrospective = I'm looking at the past, they all passed away - and it's a big pleasure, that's the point of collecting. It's certainly a [better] quality of life you have living with [these] works, but [I] also [value] the relationship we have with the artists. — Patrick Seguin

Keep a record of every picture you paint, have them photographed and write down where they went. Some day, when one reaches a great age, there will be calls for a Retrospective Exhibition of a life's work. — Keith Shackleton

Obviously, I try to make the films work for an audience. That's the main point of making a film, and in retrospect, one can see that certain films, let's say Leaving Las Vegas, demonstrated its own success. — Mike Figgis

Looking back in retrospect, there were some great moments working with some great people, ... I don't know quite how to put it into words. I don't look at it quite the same way other people do. — Dave Mason

In retrospect it always seems to work out that you can look back on something that was a disaster and find some gems in there. — Jim Carrey

It's hard to think that say Shakespeare could have written "The Tempest" when he was young. It seems to be reflective work or retrospective work. — Edward Hirsch

Working at the scene of the action, I have adopted Robert Capa's saying: 'If your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough.' But in retrospect I add a corollary: if you're too close to events, you lose perspective. — Micha Bar-Am

People Writing About Retrospective

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Read quotes by Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan
quotes on media

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Read quotes by Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Stevenson
quotes on travel, marriage and death

455 4638
Read quotes by David Beckham

David Beckham
quotes on football, victoria and life

165 561
Read quotes by Irish Proverbs

Irish Proverbs
quotes on joy, love and wisdom

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Read quotes by Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett
quotes on investing, life and success

928 10385
Read quotes by Chester W. Nimitz

Chester W. Nimitz
quotes on war, life and education

25 993

More Retrospective Quotes

It is a simple but sometimes forgotten truth that the greatest enemy to present joy and high hopes is the cultivation of retrospective bitterness. — Robert Menzies

I reflected a lot, I thought a lot on my 50th birthday. It has been one of the most important birthdays in my life, not in terms of celebration but in terms of retrospect. — Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

I might say that in retrospect, looking at where the community college system is today, I think we may have gone too far. The community college system is so big, so broad, so consuming of tax money. — Daniel J. Evans

When we recall the past, we usually find that it is the simplest things -- not the great occasions -- that in retrospect give off the greatest glow of happiness. — Bob Hope

Everybody does that now. We all take pics... you do the same with holiday photos. You record something to look back on it, even though you’re not really there when you’re taking the picture 'cause you’re too busy recording it; so you retrospectively go to look back on where you weren’t and tell yourself you had a good time. — Dylan Moran

In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what's behind something. — Andreas Gursky

The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council. — Boutros Boutros-Ghali

I exist here, now. I'm not much interested in the future. Or, more precisely put, I do not believe in the future. To exaggerate a little, I have no faith that I will still exist tomorrow or the day after. What is more, I absolutely detest retrospection. That dislike is balances only by my desire to make my way back home as quickly as possible. — Yohji Yamamoto

I've always been interested in people that you wouldn't see otherwise. If you look back at my books, photographs, and films-and since I'm doing this retrospective I've been forced to look back-the work is always about a small group of people who are somewhat isolated, and who you would never see if I didn't film or photograph them. — Larry Clark

Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance). — Michel-Rolph Trouillot

In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Until one looks back on one's own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has. — Agatha Christie

Everything that happens to us can be looked at as a gift. Although it's quite difficult when you're in the middle of a hard struggle with something, it's hard to see it as a gift, but in retrospect, we can almost always look back and say, "Oh, I see why I had to go through that." — Shakti Gawain

The last of Summer is Delight - Deterred by Retrospect. 'Tis Ecstasy's revealed Review - Enchantment's Syndicate. To meet it - nameless as it is - Without celestial Mail - Audacious as without a Knock To walk within the Veil. — Emily Dickinson

One often sees a call only in retrospect. This too is God's design. God often reinforces our faith after we trust him, not before. — Ravi Zacharias

No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect. — Edward Teller

All religions have periods in their history which are looked back to with retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and each religion has its own book of martyrs. — Richard Le Gallienne

Our Navy was very largely sunk. And we were at war in no time at all. I share, in retrospect, the distress we all share at the internment of the Japanese American citizens of the United States. It was not our finest hour. But the Supreme Court had it before it at the time, and justified it and upheld it. — William A. Rusher

You can't explain success in retrospect. The moment you leap into the void, that moment is impossible to negate, after success. — Guillermo del Toro

Christian history looks glorious in retrospect; but it is made up of constant hard choices and unattractive tasks, accepted under the pressure of the Will of God. — Evelyn Underhill

Contrary to the legend, Darwin's finches do not appear to have inspired his earliest theoretical views on evolution, even after he finally became an evolutionist in 1837; rather it was his evolutionary views that allowed him, retrospectively, to understand the complex case of the finches. — Frank Sulloway

Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospective: it has to be shattered before being ascertained. — Vladimir Nabokov

Understanding is always in some sense retrospective, which is what Hegel meant by remarking that the owl of Minerva flies only at night. — Terry Eagleton

I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. — Ansel Adams

Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence. — Henry Fuseli

But after this natural burst of indignation, no man of sense, courage, or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings. — Robert Peel

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine, and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't know how I made those movies. I went out every single night, I smoked pot every single day. I drank. We did everything, but I never became a drug addict or an alcoholic. Other friends are dead, many of them. So many people in this retrospective...in Female Trouble, almost everyone is dead. — John Waters

History is lived forwards but it is written in retrospect. We know the end before we consider the beginning and we can never wholly recapture what it was to know the beginning only. — C. V. Wedgwood

Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away. — Chuck Palahniuk

The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. . . No man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors, either of thought or action, and no society has made such advances as to be capable of no improvement from the retrospect of its past folly and credulity. — Charles MacKay

Righteousness is easy in retrospect. — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

The retrospective glance is a relatively easy gesture for us to make. — George Crumb

I was 15 years old at university, studying economics and philosophy, and I saw a retrospective of Australian film. They were very raw. 'Picnic at Hanging Rock,' 'Gallipoli;' they were fantastic. — Deborah Kara Unger

In Conclusion

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