1.
In retrospect, all revolutions seem inevitable. Beforehand, all revolutions seem impossible.
Michael McFaul
2.
If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.
Paul Farmer
3.
No endeavor that is worthwhile is simple in prospect; if it is right, it will be simple in retrospect.
Edward Teller
4.
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
5.
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.
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
8.
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
9.
There are many things we only see clearly in retrospect.
Haruki Murakami
11.
People always understand everything in retrospect.
Agnes Denes
12.
Revolutions are something you see only in retrospect.
Alan Greenspan
15.
In retrospect I would say from Donald Duck I have learned more about life than from all the schools I ever attended.
Gottfried Helnwein
16.
People steal into one's consciousness and occupy what seems, in retrospect, to have been their place all along.
Paula Fox
18.
To the best of my recollection, I became a philosopher because my parents wanted me to become a lawyer. It seems to me, in retrospect, that there was much to be said for their suggestion. On the other hand, many philosophers are quite good company; the arguments they use are generally better than the ones that lawyers use; and we do get to go to as many faculty meetings as we like at no extra charge.
Jerry Fodor
19.
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
20.
That's the past. I don't agree with retrospect.
Steve Carlton
21.
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
22.
The question is where are business ethics and morality if one of the parties wants to dishonor a binding contract, just because in retrospect it realizes it could perhaps have got a better price!
Anil Ambani
23.
In retrospect there were failures enough to go around. There were failures before the storm and failures after the storm.
Jeff Sessions
25.
There's a kind of edge to what you're doing, the kind of leading edge of what you're doing. Inside that edge [are elements you] are familiar with, and are probably becoming slightly bored with, as well, over a period of time. "I've pulled that one out before. Oh, no, I can't I'm just fed up with that. Let's do something else."And you always think "Oh my God I've never done anything at all like that before." But, of course, in retrospect, and to an outsider, they'll say, "Oh, yeah that's typical Eno.
Brian Eno
27.
Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle.
Jessica Livingston
29.
In retrospect, each of the steps toward this abyss seemed irrevocable, and yet they had all been so small!
James Blish
30.
It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark - and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.
Patricia Moyes
31.
Life is not only meant to be appreciated in retrospect ... There is something each day to embrace and cherish.
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
33.
Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .
Michael Lewis
34.
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
35.
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
36.
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
37.
In retrospect I wrote things about my life and my family's existence, I realized that it was a frighteningly harsh way to make a living. And I used to say that they were slowly dying trying to make a living.
Dwight Yoakam
38.
In retrospect, our triumphs could as easily have happened to someone else; but our defeats are uniquely our own.
Mignon McLaughlin
39.
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
40.
And then adds with a laugh, 'but in retrospect I think he may have been more sophisticated than we were.'
Dave Van Ronk
41.
In retrospect, everything is finite, but prospectively, there are infinite possibilities. I guess that's what makes life hopeful.
Demetri Martin
42.
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
44.
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
45.
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
46.
Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.
Kate Atkinson
47.
In retrospect, I think it's a plus, because now we've been able to go back and spend extra time on each of those episodes and make them better.
David E. Kelley
48.
History is just the present in retrospect. Times change but people do not.
Jeanne C. Stein
49.
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
50.
Some of the sweetest hours in life, in retrospect will be found to have been spent with books.
Ralph Waldo Emerson