Quotes About Foresight

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. —Thucydides

So during the rainy season the prudent person carries an umbrela, while the reckless person does not and, of course, gets wet when it rains. Prudence is not precise knowledge, but a willingness to adapt to circumstances in the shortest possible time.

when she contemplated the world situation she was aware that her mind would expand and become vast in three dimensions, and she could think years ahead, contemplating hundreds of moves as though she were observing a gigantic, global chessboard. When she planned, she planned sometimes decades in advance.

This was a great year for preventive worrying. Seldom in recent history have so many people worried about so many things that didn't happen in the end.

When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said … that he had a lot of issues in his life, most of which never happened.

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation.

I always plan for longterm, life to me is a never ending chess match

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.

Long lead times are required for effective action.

Una sociedad se hace grande cuando los hombres viejos plantan árboles cuya sombra nunca verán

society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they will never see'.

When passing a door-post watch as you walk on, inspect as you enter. It is uncertain where enemies lurk or crouch in a dark corner.                               Hávamál

Where we see the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided the others.

In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. [James Madison in the U.S. Constitutional Convention, June 26, 1787. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422.]

Wilde: I wish I'd said that.Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

The dim-witted state is like a chess player who is unaware that the other fellow gets to move after he does.

A true Master Player plays as thought the game is already in the past, according to a script whose every detail is known prior to the play itself.

A prediction is but an explanation in advance.

My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:Don't never prophesy—onless ye know.

Jensen dwelled on thoughts of what the future would bring and he didn't like what he saw there.

If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do and how to do it.

we should look beyond our noses;

If a person focused too much on a future that could not be controlled, he would become, Roosevelt acknowledged, too "careful, calculating, cautious in word and act.

Half of what we do, or try to be, amounts to blueprints for the future that we try to imagine.