Backward Quotes

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That's the way the mind of man operates.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Nevertheless most of the evergreen forests of the north must always remain the home of wild animals and trappers, a backward region in which it is easy for a great fur company to maintain a practical monopoly.

I hope to stand firm enough to not go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.

I'm treading the backward path. Mostly, I just waste my time.

Capitalism is a stupid system, a backward system.

It's also not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources.

Traditionally art is to create and not to revive. To revive: leave that to the historians, who are looking backward.

You walk through a series of arches, so to speak, and then, presently, at the end of a corridor, a door opens and you see backward through time, and you feel the flow of time, and realize you are only part of a great nameless procession.

I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - You write backward Es!

A second characteristic of our time is the prevalence of nationalism. This is still spreading, affecting new communities, more peripheral regions and so-called backward peoples.

Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs.

I like to think that my finest hour is still ahead of me, so I can look forward rather than look backward.

A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day.

Paradoxical as it may seem, to believe in youth is to look backward; to look forward we must believe in age.

The historian is a prophet looking backward.

Winning times in the New York City Marathon have not dropped all that much over the years, but rather U.S. runners went backward. In 1983, there were 267 U.S. men who broke 2:20 in a marathon, and by 2000 that number was down to 27.

Nowadays, anyone who cannot speak English and is incapable of using the Internet is regarded as backward.

What we need in America is a renaissance. We need to go forward by going backward.

You have to split, bend over backward, touch our toe to our heads to get recognized.

Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization.

I find it hard to focus looking forward. So I look backward.

Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there's got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you're at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together.

A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

If I see an ending, I can work backward.

Why is it so painful to watch a person sink? Because there is something unnatural in it, for nature demands personal progress, evolution, and every backward step means wasted energy.

Like all of Latin America, Mexico after independence in 1821 turned its back on a triple heritage: on the Spanish heritage, because we were newly liberated colonies, and on our Indian and black heritages, because we considered them backward and barbaric. We looked towards France, England and the U.S., to become progressive democratic republics.