Top 100 In Retrospect Quotes
#1. The complicated thing about friends is that sometimes they are totally wrong about us and sometimes they are totally right and it's almost always only in retrospect that we know which is which.
Cheryl Strayed
#2. Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.
Alan Greenspan
#3. I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development.
Will Self
#4. History is just the present in retrospect. Times change but people do not.
Jeanne C. Stein
#5. Humor is a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect.There is always a laugh in the utterly familiar.
Max Eastman
#6. Sure, I've been a victim, but in retrospect, most of it has been of my own making. I allowed it to happen.
Wayne Newton
#7. When I first heard about Y Combinator, it was one of those ideas that just seemed forehead-slappingly obvious. Good ideas often do, in retrospect.
Mark Fletcher
#8. At times of great emotion, good or bad, I find I am gone, somewhere else, watching it happen to me, a different me. I miss a lot of my own life, my own moments, because I step outside myself. I feel it all more in retrospect than in actual time.
Rosie O'Donnell
#9. Frustration and I have become good friends. And like any friend who's a bad influence, frustration sometimes makes me do things that are, in retrospect, stupid. - Sirensong
Jenna Black
#10. In retrospect, the political and cultural climate in the early '60s seems both a time of innocence and also like a sultry, still summer day in the Midwest: an unsettling calm before a ferocious storm over Vietnam, which was not yet an American war.
Tom Brokaw
#11. Vietnam was a palpable failure. And of course, in retrospect, it was even more clearly a disaster and a failure than maybe people understood at the time.
Robert Dallek
#12. Nirvana occurs when you not only look forward to rapture, but also gaze back into the times of anguish and find in them the seeds of your joy. You may not have felt that happiness at the time, but in retrospect it is incontrovertible.
Andrew Solomon
#13. But stupidity is one of two things we see most clearly in retrospect. The other is missed chances. 18
Stephen King
#14. In retrospect, I think I had some kind of learning disorder. I could kind of charm my way through grade school, but in high school ... I could never seem to grasp things.
Dave Cooper
#15. The flame of urgent coupling burned hottest against the woman, no matter how romantic and high and heartsick the anguish of the man might be pitched in retrospect.
Charles Frazier
#16. Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich ...
Michael Lewis
#17. Even a saint may take pleasure, in retrospect, in having been once desired
Ellis Peters
#18. That's like looking for dick in a lesbian bar. In retrospect, Chase would agree. But he'd
Anonymous
#19. Destiny is not something that happens all at once-it's something that happens only in retrospect.
John Green
#20. We were good together. Not in retrospect, not out of nostalgia. Not in anticipation. But here and now good. Very good.
Eshkol Nevo
#21. I have never heard anyone say This is it. I know right now is the high point of my life. It will never get any better. Only in retrospect do we recognize the best times and of course then it is too late.
Jonathan Carroll
#22. 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
#23. In retrospect I would say from Donald Duck I have learned more about life than from all the schools I ever attended.
Gottfried Helnwein
#24. Complacency is a state of mind that exists only in retrospect; it has to be shattered before ascertained.
Vladimir Nabokov
#25. Do we only decide in retrospect that we've been happy? Don't we notice when we're happy, or do we realize only much later that we were?
Nina George
#26. You're the one who unleashed him. (Savitar) Yeah, well, let's move on from the blame game. I was having suicidal thoughts and it seemed like a good idea at the time. In retrospect, not so much. (Stryker)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#27. When seen in retrospect, fashions seem to express their era. Although it is more difficult to draw conclusions from contemporary clothes, the same principles which hold for the clothes of the past must hold for clothes of the present and the future.
James Laver
#28. I tried four times to get into the Central School of Speech and Drama before I got accepted. I started when I was 17, which was too young, in retrospect, and finally went when I was 21. I just kept plugging away. Determined? Yeah, I think I was.
Catherine Tate
#29. Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct.
Carl Sagan
#30. There are many things we only see
clearly in retrospect.
Haruki Murakami
#31. In retrospect, of course I regret calling them (Charlton fans) morons. Imbeciles would have been more appropriate.
Simon Jordan
#32. The clothes chosen for me as a child had a strong element of the Pre-Raphaelite, muted greens and ivories, dusty rose, what seems in retrospect an eccentric amount of black.
Joan Didion
#33. When I started writing fiction it always seemed in retrospect (I didn't realise at the time) that it was always caused by environments rather than by incidents and characters.
Jonathan Meades
#34. I was afraid the staff would laugh at me - and as frightened as I was, the thought of derision frightened me even more. In retrospect, it was a life-threatening deception, somewhat along the lines of hiding recurrent chest pains from one's cardiologist from embarrassment. Nearly
Elyn R. Saks
#35. It would in retrospect appear to be a stop on a narrative path that was inevitable, but this is only because most events, most paths, feel inevitable in retrospect.
Curtis Sittenfeld
#36. It's always hard for an author to determine his own intentions, especially in retrospect.
Paul Kingsnorth
#37. Sometimes doing what's right for your conscience is not always the most popular decision, but I can guarantee that in retrospect you won't regret the choice you made.
Tyler Oakley
#38. Decisions are never made in retrospect, hence there is no point regretting them, ever.
David Darson
#39. I felt that, in retrospect, there was a time in the late Seventies, after I had a string of hits and successes, as a performer and a recording artist, that I wasn't saying anything.
Boz Scaggs
#40. But now that I view the scene in retrospect I see it as a very gentle and firm deportation, taking me from the country of the well across the stark frontier that marks off the land of malady.
Christopher Hitchens
#41. The path of development is a journey of discovery that is clear only in retrospect, and it's rarely a straight line.
Eileen Kennedy-Moore
#42. In retrospect, come to think of it, isn't everything seen in retrospect?
Marty Feldman
#45. In retrospect there were failures enough to go around. There were failures before the storm and failures after the storm.
Jeff Sessions
#46. In retrospect, it was easy to want to sleep with someone whose laundry I did not have to fold.
Marcia DeSanctis
#47. His passion was the Galaxy. In retrospect, it's fitting that we won a championship for him this last year because I think he was so passionate about this team and loved every single player and the organization.
Steve Sampson
#48. I am not good at noticing when I'm happy, except in retrospect.
Tana French
#49. My mother would never let me in the kitchen. I always wanted to cook, but I was never allowed to. Her view of the world was, 'Cooking is my job, and studying is your job.' I think, in retrospect, she didn't like the chaos. She was very orderly. It had to be her way.
Ina Garten
#50. In retrospect, I think maybe Audrey Hepburn was going to talk to me about doing something for UNICEF. I was so overwhelmed to just even be in her presence and I was very young, but it was really special and unforgettable.
Winona Ryder
#51. In retrospect it becomes clear that hindsight is definitely overrated!
Sergio Aragones
#52. What is fate but coincidences in retrospect?
Ken Liu
#53. Persistence is a pretty important part of making it in this business, which, in retrospect, is the easy part. Maintaining a profile is the difficult part of the job. Somehow or another, I muddled through that system and somehow am around to still enjoy playing for people.
Chris Squire
#54. became one of the first fifty employees at Atari, working as a technician for $5 an hour. "In retrospect, it was
Walter Isaacson
#55. The first song that I remember writing in its entirety was when I was 9 years old. I wrote it on a bus, on a field trip. It was called 'Mystery Man,' and in retrospect, it was the beginning of my exploration of what it was like to have a man in your life, because I didn't.
Kat Edmonson
#56. It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.
Kurt Vonnegut
#57. Everything is funnier in retrospect, funnier and prettier and cooler. You can laugh at anything from far enough away.
Chuck Palahniuk
#58. 'Acting as if ... ' I decided, ridiculously in retrospect, that my experience covering women's volleyball for my college newspaper was sufficient for me to at least try to become a war correspondent.
Samantha Power
#59. Life must be lived forward but only makes sense by looking backward. Only in retrospect do the pieces of the puzzle connect, revealing an intelligently orchestrated evolution. Our journey through life is in a way like walking blindfolded.
Dorit Brauer
#60. The book and I secret ourselves
Behind the paneled door.
We merge our thoughts in retrospect
Of ancient mystic lore.
We spend a pleasant quiet hour,
Nor know it passed us by ...
The easy chair, the shaded lamp,
A well-loved book and I.
Edna Moore Schultz
#61. In retrospect, the most unnerving aspect of being openly gay was that it turned out to be as disappointingly normal as being straight.
Lance Loud
#62. I had repeatedly accepted inappropriate burdens, stepping in to do what needed to be done. In retrospect, I think I carried them well, but the cost was that I was chronically overloaded, weary, and short of time for politicking, smoothing ruffled feathers, and simply resting.
Mary Catherine Bateson
#63. My main objective with every album is to capture a moment in time, which usually makes the whole process very relaxing. I only discover in retrospect when looking back at the songs how my life is going!
Alanis Morissette
#64. Whatever the Garden had once been, now it was seething with corruption. Abundant life. It makes me laugh, in retrospect. Mr. Faust, did you know that there's a medical term for abundant life? For cellular life bursting out of control and running wild.
Craig Schaefer
#65. You know, 'Peepshow,' in retrospect that seems like a good fit for me, but in the beginning, I'm sure you remember, nobody was sure if the show was going to last. Everybody was like, 'What are you doing? You can't sing, and you can't dance. What are you doing in this show?'
Holly Madison
#66. The Clinton administration cared a lot about the middle class and the poor. But it also cared a lot - too much, in retrospect - about the rich.
Timothy Noah
#67. In retrospect, we could see that the 1950s had been a reactionary period in America of Eisenhower blandness, of virulent anticommunism, of the 'Feminine Mystique.'
Edmund White
#68. Perfect days are for people with small, realizable dreams. Or maybe for all of us, they just happen in retrospect; they're only now perfect because they contain something irrevocably and irretrievably lost.
Julie Buxbaum
#70. My father said I should become a doctor and do science in my spare time, which in retrospect might not have been a bad idea, but I wasn't interested in taking care of people's ills.
Sheldon Lee Glashow
#71. In retrospect, our triumphs could as easily have happened to someone else; but our defeats are uniquely our own.
Mignon McLaughlin
#72. Life was good, and already she understood that to be aware of happiness when you were actually feeling it, and not just in retrospect, was to be happy indeed.
Alison Weir
#73. Life is not only meant to be appreciated in retrospect ... There is something each day to embrace and cherish.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
#74. Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is.
Howard Fineman
#75. Strange that, the way happiness only works in retrospect.
Peter Akinti
#76. The Eagles ended on a rather abrupt note, although in retrospect I realize now that it had been ending for quite some time.
Don Henley
#77. Strange how a single conversation can change you. Or maybe it only seems that way in retrospect.
Barack Obama
#78. As a child I was attracted to Tarzan and everything that had to do with jungles. It seemed to me
and this is in retrospect
that there was something primal, something right about it. Tarzan represented a pure being, somehow before the fall.
Jean Liedloff
#79. Well, she managed to - Barbara was capable of doing practically anything if she set her mind to it. In retrospect, I'm not surprised that Barbara managed to get collect calls through.
Ted Olson
#80. Eventually we will find (mostly in retrospect, of course) that we can be very grateful to those people who have made life most difficult for us.
Ayya Khema
#81. To me, in retrospect, it was amazing that 'Seinfeld' was a show that had such mass appeal. At first it was a disaster in the ratings, but then it became a cultural phenomenon. I don't know if that's possible anymore, but I don't try for that.
Bill Lawrence
#82. Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle.
Jessica Livingston
#83. In retrospect they might have started sleeping together solely out of conversational exhaustion.
Robert Jackson Bennett
#85. People steal into one's consciousness and occupy what seems, in retrospect, to have been their place all along.
Paula Fox
#86. Of course, we wrote the songs accordingly and performed and recorded them that way. At that time, we really thought it was right, but you know, seen in retrospect, it made the album sound forced, and not really great.
Mark McGrath
#87. The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them. The rays simply destroyed body cells - caused their nuclei to degenerate and broke their walls.
John Hersey
#88. At the time there were moments of extreme discomfort; but the adventure, the danger, the exhilaration of doubt and peril are in retrospect something I rather regret having lost.
Elizabeth Peters
#89. 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
#90. In diplomacy, as in life itself, one often learns more from failures than from successes. Triumphs will seem, in retrospect, to be foreordained, a series of brilliant actions and decisions that may in fact have been lucky or inadvertent, whereas failures illuminate paths and pitfalls to be avoided.
Richard Holbrooke
#91. Republicans are already on seriously thin ice, having presided over an era of unprecedented spending and consistently failing to articulate conservative principles on a wide variety of issues. But what Obama has in store will make President Bush appear, in retrospect, like a libertarian.
David Limbaugh
#92. I enjoyed mathematics from a very young age. At the beginning of college, I had this illusion, which was kind of silly in retrospect, that if I just understood math and physics and philosophy, I could figure out everything else from first principles.
Erez Lieberman Aiden
#93. Each person's life is dominated by a central event, which shapes and distorts everything that comes after it and, in retrospect, everything that came before.
Suketu Mehta
#94. How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long, summer days of unreflecting dissipation.
Evelyn Waugh
#95. Memory is not a storage place but a story we tell ourselves in retrospect. As such, it is made of storytelling materials: embroidery and forgery, perplexity and urgency, revelation and darkness.
Noam Shpancer
#96. With 9:36 left in the game, in retrospect we might have gone for two because we ended up with three more plays on offense the rest of the game. It's a lot easier looking back and analyzing going for two.
Dennis Franchione
#97. I knew I was going to be composing. It all makes sense in retrospect. But you don't know while you're in the process of improvising your life.
William Bolcom
#98. Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#99. The past in retrospect holds manifold disenchantments, failures and even tragedies; and yet the worse may be forgotten and the best held fast.
William Robertson Nicoll
#100. In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.
Malcolm Muggeridge
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