Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

You can never plan the future by the past.

Wise men say, and not without reason, that whosoever wished to foresee the future might consult the past.

People are powerfully moved by imagination, belief, and knowledge. They can consider the past and future. They can make changes in their behavior out of reason in a way that animals can't do.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

I know of no way of judging the future but by the past.

One who does not look ahead remains behind.

[Addressing Thomas Jefferson:] Your taste is judicious in liking better the dreams of the future than the history of the past.

If one does not forget one's previous experience, one can learn for the future from the past.

Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, Wisdom is of the future.

We ought not to look back, unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear bought experience.

The only danger of knowing and thinking a lot about history, is that you will trip on something behind you. Be sure you also look ahead.

The future isn't something hidden in a corner.The future is something we build in the present.

The wise form right judgment of the present from what is past.

By how much one man has more experience of things past, than another, by so much also he is more prudent, and his expectations the seldomer fail him.

We're really at this point where we can take a step back and think about the next big things that we want to do.

Hindsight alone is not wisdom. And second-guessing is not a strategy.

I literally don't know what I'm going to do next. That's successful.

We do not act because we know, but we know because we are called upon to act; the practical reason is the root of all reason.

You have to make smart decisions, but you never know what will happen in the future.

It is history that teaches us to hope.

Hindsight, usually looked down upon, is probably as valuable as foresight, since it does include a few facts.

Most people, after accomplishing something, use it over and over again like a gramophone record till it cracks, forgetting that the past is just the stuff with which to make more future.

I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be.

An answer is always on the stretch of road that is behind you. Only a question can point the way forward.

Before we can build the world we want to live in, we have to imagine it.