Quotes About Foresight

In Lincoln's mind, at least as Lamon interpreted the story, "the illusion was a sign." Both the president-elect and his wife believed it meant he would not only survive his term in office, but four years later win reelection to a second one, only to die before it ended.

Planning is deciding in advance what to do and how to do it. Planning bridges the gap between where we are and where we want to go. It makes it possible for things to occur which would not otherwise happen.

History is apt to judge harshly those who sacrifice tomorrow for today.

If younger people see older people who haven't planned ahead and have to rely on charity, the young will be more likely to provide for the future. Today when someone plans poorly, the only consequence people see is a demand for more government.

Intelligence resembles insanity only to the stupid.

Predicting correctly is the definition of wisdom.

Always nice to have an officer who can see past the end of his beard

an insight can arrive long ahead of its usefulness.

Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees.

Los planes son inútiles», decía el presidente Eisenhower, apoyado en su experiencia militar, «pero la planificación lo es todo».

las acciones inmediatas a la luz de consecuencias que podía anticipar».

always show confidence, for you can see your own troubles but you cannot see those facing your enemy.12

El contraste, por lo tanto, no se establecía solo con la fuerza bruta, sino también con la imprudencia de todos aquellos que no eran capaces de captar las señales de peligro y que eran incapaces de pensar en las posibles consecuencias de sus actos.

la palabra «estrategia» sigue siendo la mejor para expresar el proceso de ideas anticipatorias referidas a acciones dirigidas a conseguir nuestos objetivos de acuerdo con nuestras posibilidades.

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

In order to succeed, it is not necessary to be much cleverer than other people. All you have to be is one day ahead of them.

nothing is left to chance; everything must be deeply considered.

Life can only be understood backward; but it must be lived forwards. —Søren Kierkegaard

But McNamara knew more than the actual facts—he also knew the hypothetical ones. When you talked with him, you realized that he had already played out in his head the relevant details for every conceivable option and scenario.

If you do not know history, you think short term. If you know history, you think medium and long term

The present is pregnant with the future.

No generation can do another generation's work for it. What we human beings can do at most is to mark out the pathway a little clearer for the generations to come after, and put legible signboards at the points where the greatest dangers have threatened us, in the hope that our posterity will read, understand, and be warned.

Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.