The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

The closer the look one takes at a word, the greater the distance from which it looks back.

Can we live in a way where we look forward to looking back?

Go as far as you can see and you will see further.

If you must look back, do so forgivingly. If you must look forward, do so prayerfully. However, the wisest thing you can do is be present in the present... gratefully.

I look forward and see myself look back.

People who take a long view of their lives and careers always seem to make much better decisions about their time and activities than people who give very little thought to the future.

As far as culture and politics are concerned, the important theme is long-attention-span vs. short-attention-span thinking. I'm sure that your readers can think of any number of ways in which having a longer attention span can be useful. But I'll name one. Bankers with long attention spans don't lend money to people who can't pay it back. If we had more bankers who adopted a long-term view of their responsibilities, we might not be in the middle of a financial crisis that is blowing away 150-year-old investment banks.

So rather than assuming long-term thinkers don’t have to deal with short-term nonsense, ask the question, “How can I endure a never-ending parade of nonsense?” Long-term thinking can be a deceptive safety blanket that people assume lets them bypass the painful and unpredictable short run. But it never does. It might be the opposite: The longer your time horizon, the more calamities and disasters you’ll experience. Baseball player Dan Quisenberry once said, “The future is much like the present, only longer.” Dealing with that reality requires a certain kind of alignment that’s easy to overlook.

To look back is to relax one's vigil.

We very often fail to see our present circumstances in right perspective. Look back over the past, however, and compare what you have been brought through with your frame of mind during each successive period. Consider how wonderfully one thing has been connected with another so that what we now count as our greatest benefits are

It is always wise to look ahead – but difficult to look further than you can see.

The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers. I have always lived in a world in which I'm just a spot in history. My life is not the important point. I'm just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on. I cannot conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that.