Retrospective Quotes

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

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Mind, Complacency, States

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• The retrospective glance is a relatively easy gesture for us to make.

  George Crumb

  Gestures, Easy, Glances

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• 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

  Hope, Wisdom, Truth

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• I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.

  Hugh Laurie

  Thinking, Should Have, Done

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• The Anthropocene essentially would be the time of human influence on the planet. That's controversial though, because geology is a retrospective discipline. The rocks of the Anthropocene haven't been deposited yet, really.

  Kenneth Lacovara

  Rocks, Discipline, Would Be

  "What's The Anthropocene?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. September 30, 2016.

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

  Ansel Adams

  Fall, Past, Vision

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• 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

  Book, Eras, Periods

  Richard Le Gallienne (1915). “Vanishing Roads, and Other Essays”

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• 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

  Courage, Men, Waste

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• I thought it would be my one and only exhibition so I decided to call it My Major Retrospective.

  Tracey Emin

  Would Be, Exhibitions, My One And Only

  "Show and tell". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. April 21, 2001.

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• 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

  Enough, Members, Aggressive

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• I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. Intuition, suspicion, or confidence in new ventures; there is a strange strain within me when advantage is not taken of some situation, the immediacy of recognition of the rightness or wrongness of a mood, a response, a decision - they are so often valid that I am increasingly convinced that we have yet to grasp the reality of existence.

  Ansel Adams

  Fall, Taken, Past

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• 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

  Trust, Faith, God

  Twitter post from Nov 06, 2015

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• A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn't do.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Thinking, Lifetime, Terror

  Barbara Kingsolver (2001). “Homeland and Other Stories”, Wheeler Pub Incorporated

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• F For Fake is a talentless concoction of unparalleled ineptitude... It would have been a more generous gesture to show a retrospective of old Welles films rather than remind everyone of how low his ability as a filmmaker has plummeted.

  Rex Reed

  Fake, Gestures, Ineptitude

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• I don't know if this is the kind of retrospective analysis that people are fond of applying to their work or actions, but it feels like I knew I was going to be famous and I knew that an element of that would be traumatic, so that if I could make myself something big and otherworldly, it would be a kind of defence.

  Russell Brand

  People, Would Be, Analysis

  "Russell Brand: This charming man". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. June 4, 2010.

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• The problem is when you are writing something in retrospective, it needs a lot of courage not to change, or you will forget a certain reality, and you will just take in consideration your view today.

  Boutros Boutros-Ghali

  Writing, Reality, Views

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• To me, photography is 90% a retrospective experience. There's the part of pursuing the image, and exposing the film, but once you make the exposure, you're always looking backwards in time. I like that aspect of photography.

  John Sexton

  Photography, Photographer, Film

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• Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories and criticism.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Father, Writing, Self Reliance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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• In politics, as in womanizing, failure is decisive. It sheds its retrospective gloom on earlier endeavor which at the time seemed full of promise.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Promise, Politician, Endeavor

  Malcolm Muggeridge (1966). “The Most of Malcolm Muggeridge”

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• Retrospective analysis is not a useful guide to current problems.

  David Ignatius

  Analysis, Problem, Guides

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• The university must be retrospective. The gale that gives direction to the vanes on all its towers blows out of antiquity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Blow, Giving, Towers

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.356, Penguin

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• Gunn would be an important figure-rewarding, delightful, accomplished, enduring-in the history of English-language poetry even were his life not as fascinating as it now seems; he would be an important figure in the history of gay writing and in the history of transatlantic literary relations even were his poetry not so good as it is. With his life as it was and his works as they are, he's an obvious candidate for a volume of retrospective and critical essays, and this one is first-rate.

  Stephen Burt

  Writing, Gay, Important

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• I think the reason why I never wanted to do a retrospective is because I was scared to go back and look at all this stuff through the years.

  Larry Clark

  Thinking, Years, Looks

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• You pick up very well-known books on Lincoln [and] you will find almost no reference to his long-term belief in colonization. Why? Because it doesn't fit the image of the Great Emancipator. It doesn't fit the retrospective view we want to have of Lincoln as the man who was the moralist in politics, who came into office committed to ending slavery and waited to sign this document.

  Eric Foner

  Book, Men, Views

  "Eric Foner on the Perennial Relevance of Abraham Lincoln". Interview with Aaron Leonard, historynewsnetwork.org. October 4, 2010.

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• The left hemisphere acts as an "interpreter," watching the actions and behaviors of the body and assigning a coherent narrative to these events. And the left hemisphere works this way even in normal, intact brains. Hidden programs drive actions, and the left hemisphere makes justifications. This idea of retrospective storytelling suggests that we come to know our own attitudes and emotions, at least partially, by inferring them from observations of our own behavior.

  David Eagleman

  Attitude, Ideas, Brain

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.143, Vintage

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