Quotes About What-if

Thinking about the world as it isn't, but might be or might have been, is called counterfactual thinking.

Use your imagination as an arrow hurtling back toward what might have been or will never be.

It's safe to say that the '86 Rockets were the signature what-if team in NBA history.

Philip had been betrothed to Ruth for over forty years, but some nights he still thought about Sophie more than he cared to admit. The sliding door. The road not taken. The big what-if. The good one he'd let get away.

He won't feel a fraction of what I do for you. You won't change his life. And you will always wonder about what could have been, always feel that funny little ache right here." He puts his hand over your heart.

What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation.

I do think about how different my life might have been had my mother not died so young, but I try not to delve into it too deeply, as it's like 'Sliding Doors,' isn't it? You just don't know.

Gah, I'm what-iffing! I don't what-if! What-iffing is for grownups. They what-if themselves right into doing nothing, and die without ever living.

I miss the silliness of the Nineties. What would society be like if 9/11 never happened? If that silliness was extended forever?

If we'd had Drew Brees, I might still be in Miami.

Imagine what might have happened had you not missed your train

In the many-mansioned house of Alternate History, I occupy a small corner. The trio of what-ifs I chronicled in 'Then Everything Changed' all begin with tiny, highly plausible twists of fate that lead to hugely consequential shifts in history.

And if I didn't, I'd spend the rest of my life wondering who I could have turned into if only I'd had the guts to try.

Do not plant your dreams in the field of indecision, where nothing ever grows but the weeds of "what-if."

Ecco che ponderava su cose che non sono state: cos'avrebbe fatto Cesare se fosse sopravvissuto per aver creduto alla veggente; cosa sarebbe potuto essere, le possibilità del possibile in quanto possibile...

The thoughts that linger are the "if only" questions, like Who could I have become if I had finally done the things I always wanted to do?

And what, for instance, would have happened had Romeo and Juliet lived to middle age, their silhouettes broadened by pasta?

My character, Rick Spleen, is a what-if version of me, really, where nothing did quite turn out right and everything else is still around the corner.

I believe history will come to view 9/11 as an event on par with November 22, 1963, the date on which John F. Kennedy was murdered, cutting short a presidency that was growing ever more promising. Dreams died that day in Dallas; it is easy to imagine the 1960s turning out rather differently had President Kennedy lived.

Love is like a moment, once its gone you can't get it back, you're left to ponder on what could have been.

A piece of me will always wonder what would have happened if you would have never pushed me away and left me to myself.

it would have been the Reman Empire, instead of the Roman.

To see how things would be different if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?

I know a small part of you thinks you could've ended up with Natalie Portman if you had played things a little differently. That's nice. You can have that. That's not hurting anybody.