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Retrospective Quotes

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Retrospective Quotes

“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.”

RealitySeemsPastFallDecisionExistenceSituationVisionTakenStrangeAdvantageResponseIntuitionConvincedMoodRecognitionLogicalSignificanceSuspicionVentureStrainSequenceMy PastPast LifeImmediacyRetrospectiveNew Ventures
Author:Ansel Adams
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“I know every numbskull will babble on about "black man," "maneater," "chance," and "retrospective interpretation," in order to banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the familiar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, healthy-minded people, they always remind me of those optimistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded.”

PeopleKnowsMenMightTogetherOrderNextLeftBlackWaterChanceMorningSunChildhoodHealthyFamiliarOptimisticInnocenceInterpretationEfficientTailsInconvenientMemories Dreams ReflectionsPuddlesStrandedRetrospectiveTadpoles
Author:Carl Jung
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“I greatly doubt whether the men who become pirate chiefs are those who are filled with retrospective terror of their fathers, or whether Napoleon , at Austerlitz, really felt that he was getting even with Madame Mère. I know nothing of the mother of Attila , but I rather suspect that she spoilt the little darling, who subsequently found the world irritating because it sometimes resisted his whims.”

KnowsMenWorldLittlesSometimesMotherFoundFatherFeltDoubtHe ManFilledTerrorChiefsSuspectsDarlingPirateWhimIrritatingRetrospectiveSpoilt
Book:Power: A New Social Analysis
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“I felt most beautiful on the red carpet in Givenchys sheer lace dress at a dinner hosted by Givenchy in honor of Marina Abramovich at the closing of her Museum of Modern Art retrospective, The Artist is Present, in 2010. It was the first time I had been dressed for an event, and everybody just fell in love with the dress.”

FirstsArtBeautifulArtistFeltModernEventsHonorFirst TimeRedDressesDinnerMuseumsSheerCarpetClosingRed CarpetLaceModern ArtRetrospectiveGivenchy
Author:Joan Smalls
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“Both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporary suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.”

InspirationalLittlesDreamPastSufferingTurnsEvilHeavenReligiousSinPleasureKnowingGloryConsequenceLet MeSpreadMortalsBlissGood And EvilTemporaryNot KnowingAgonyBackwardsDamnationRetrospectiveGreat Divorce
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.”

TryingEndsActionPastCausesImaginationMy OwnComplexesSurrenderAlternativesMotiveFacultyRoutesCravingBoundlessMy PastForksAnalyticsRetrospective
Book:Lolita
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“You know, also I, you know, I was on those birth control pills and my breasts were like, they hurt... and, you know, it was like they blew up like. You know, they wouldn't fit into any of my dresses. I had to quit taking those birth control pills... This was like - I mean they were like, I thought they should be photographed really... So they were, for immortality. (On being photographed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp at Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art.)”

KnowsShouldMeanArtHurtLike YouBirthFitDressesQuittingChessImmortalityBreastsMuseumsPillsBirth ControlPlaying ChessRetrospectiveBirth Control PillsPasadena
Author:Eve Babitz
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“[Bill] Binney will argue with you all day about ThinThread, but his idea was that it would collect everything about everybody but be immediately encrypted so no one could read it. Only a court could give intelligence officials the key to decrypt it. The idea was to find a kind of a compromise between [privacy rights and] the assertion that if you don't collect things as they happen, you won't have them later - because what the NSA really wants is the capability of retrospective investigation.”

IfsWantGivingKindIdeasHappensRightsKeysBillsCourtArguingCompromiseOfficialsPrivacyCapabilityInvestigationAssertionNsaRetrospective
Author:Edward Snowden
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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.”

MenWantWellsLongBookBeliefTermViewsKnownHe ManFitOfficePicksSlaveryCommittedLong TermDocumentsWell KnownColonizationMoralistRetrospectiveEnding Slavery
Author:Eric Foner
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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.”

KnowsWayIdeasBodyActionLeftEmotionBrainAttitudeEventsBehaviorNormalProgramStorytellingObservationNarrativeJustificationInterpreterHemisphereRetrospective
Book:Incognito: The Secret Lives of The Brain
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“We walked at night towards a cafe blooming with Japanese lanterns and I followed your white shoes gleaming like radium in the damp darkness. Rising off the water, lights flickered an invitation far enough away to be interpreted as we liked; to shimmer glamourously behind the silhouette of retrospective good times when we still believed in summer hotels and the philosophies of popular songs.”

StillsEnoughPhilosophyLightNightSongWaterWhiteBehindsDarknessSummerShoesRisingGood TimesHotelInvitationsPopular SongDampCafesBloomingLanternsSilhouettesShimmerRetrospectiveWhite Shoes
Author:Zelda Fitzgerald
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“A great deal has been said about love at first sight; I am perfectly aware of love's retrospective tendency to make a legend of itself, turn its beginnings into myth; so I don't want to assert that it was love; but I have no doubt there was a kind of clairvoyance at work: I immediately felt, sensed, grasped the essence of Lucie's being or, to be more precise, the essence of what she was later to become for me; Lucie had revealed herself to me the way religious truth reveals itself.”

WayWantFirstsKindHas BeensSaidTurnsFeltReligiousDealsDoubtEssenceSightMythTendenciesNo DoubtLegendsLove At First SightPreciseRetrospectiveReligious TruthClairvoyance
Author:Milan Kundera
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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.”

WritingFirstsImportantSeemsWould BeLanguageFiguresGayRelationEndureRateObviousCriticalCandidatesAccomplishedFascinatingVolumeDelightfulEssaysEnglish LanguageRetrospective
Author:Stephen Burt
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“Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).”

MomentsFactsProcessSilenceFourCreationSourceHistoricalFinalsProductionsInstanceNarrativeSignificanceCrucialAssemblyArchivesRetrospectiveCrucial Moments
Book:Silencing the Past (20th anniversary edition): Power and the Production of History
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