What Could Have Been Quotes

Following is our list of could have been quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about what we could have been.

Could have been quote
Inspirational could have been quote

The Most Famous Could Have Been Quotes (Best in 2024)

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We can never know what might have been but what is to come is another matter entirely — C. S. Lewis

The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have. — Louis E. Boone

Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, “It might have been.” — Kurt Vonnegut

Stay away from what might have been, and look at what can be. — Marsha Petrie Sue

Could have been quote

Look at what you could have won! — Jim Bowen

Shouda, coulda, and woulda won’t get it done. — Pat Riley

There’s no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it. — Pat Riley

Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also call’d No-more, Too-late, Farewell. — Dante Gabriel Rossetti

With the benefit of hindsight, had more care been taken, maybe this could have been avoided — Eason Jordan

Our suffering is caused by holding on to how things might have been, should have been, could have been. — Stephen Levine

Short Could Have Been Quotes

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  • Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. — Barack Obama
  • History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided. — Konrad Adenauer
  • I could not have made it this far had there not been angels along the way. — Della Reese
  • History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided. — Konrad Adenauer
  • I could have been a dancer. I just never got my shot at it. — Theo Von
  • I have been luckier than the law of averages should allow. I could never be so lucky again. — Jimmy Doolittle
  • This is a sad, regrettable day that all of us wish could have been avoided. — Gary Bettman
  • Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different. — Oprah Winfrey
  • Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at. — Unknown
  • Tired faith all worn and thin, for all we could have done, and all that could have been. — Trent Reznor

Could Have Been Image Quotes

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Could have been quote by Konrad Adenauer

History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided. — Konrad Adenauer

Could have been quote by Konrad Adenauer

History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided. — Konrad Adenauer

Could have been quote Some days I wish I could go back in life. Not to change anything, but to feel a
Some days I wish I could go back in life. Not to change anything, but to feel a few things twice.

What Could Have Been Quotes

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I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared [to register to vote] – but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember. — Fannie Lou Hamer

(F)or 50 years, the well-meaning leftist agenda has been able to do to blacks what Jim Crow and harsh discrimination could never have done: family breakdown, illegitimacy and low academic achievement. — Walter E. Williams

No man is hurt but by himself. …Literally by how he interprets what happens to him. If he focusses on how it could have been better, he will be hurt. If he focusses on how it could have been worse, he will be happy. The same is true for women too. — Diogenes

Could have been quote Every minute spent worrying about "The way thing were" is a moment stolen from c
Every minute spent worrying about “The way thing were” is a moment stolen from creating the way things can be.

For even in hell, I still have faith, To one day be free with my father at the gates, But make no mistakes, I’ll show you what time takes, To be a success on earth, mixed with all the hate, I stand on my pivot, my life you could not live it For the things that I’ve seen have been too damn explicit. — Kid Cudi

You know what the true definition of hell is? It’s when you die, you get to meet the person you could have been. — Frank Mir

My stiffest earthly assignment is ended and my major life’s work is done. My country is now free and I have been honoured to be its first indigenous head of state. What more could one desire in life? — Nnamdi Azikiwe

Could have been quote Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could
Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.

Michael Brown and Eric Garner died because they got into a confrontation that could have been easily avoided. That’s what made their deaths so tragic. — Mike Rowe

The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance. — Viktor E. Frankl

I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking. — George Macdonald

I’m not sure what the future holds but I do know that I’m going to be positive and not wake up feeling desperate. As my dad said ‘Nic, it is what it is, it’s not what it should have been, not what it could have been, it is what it is.’ — Nicole Kidman

What We Could Have Been Quotes

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Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price. — Elie Wiesel

If with so little we have done so much in Brazil, imagine what could have been done on a global scale, if the fight against hunger and poverty were a real priority for the international community. — Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

Think what a contribution selfish people of great talent could have made if their commitments had been made to Jesus Christ instead of to themselves! We will do better in every aspect of our lives if we commit to a God in whose life we see miracles, power over disease and death. — Vaughn J Featherstone

Could have been quote Think about what could go right.
Think about what could go right.

In my movies, there has been little to do in the way of animal rights. I have never worked in a movie with animals. No horse-riding, no trained dogs, lions, bears. A few actors, but what could I do? We had to have them. — Casey Affleck

We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums. — Dianne Feinstein

I’ve been an atheist since I was nine years old. And my mom is really religious, so we have a strange relationship. But if my mother was right, what would be the reason that the gods could let anything bad happen in the world? — Tarsem Singh

Could have been quote If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.
If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.

Country music has changed tremendously, so what now is considered country was not considered country at that time. We were doing stuff that probably could have been called country music today, but would certainly have not have fit in at that time. — Charlie Daniels

We had offers to go everywhere and we could have done them. But what would have been the point? We were tired. We had worked hard and needed a break before we got stale. We spent six months at home and writing songs. — John Bonham

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love, especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on, we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them, held their hand, looked in their eyes, been there. — Kevin Costner

I don’t think that we’re limiting talent. I think if I could reverse the clock a little bit, there would have been more kind coverage among female journalists for what I was doing. — Kellyanne Conway

Thinking Of What Could Have Been Quotes

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What I learned, in the two months that we shot, I don’t think I could have learned in two to four years of drama school. It’s invaluable to me, and that’s been the most fun. It’s been nice to let this be a learning experience in everything. — Steven Yeun

What could be more advantageous in an intellectual contest – whether it be chess, bridge, or stock selection – than to have opponents who have been taught that thinking is a waste of energy? — Warren Buffett

All of my films have been very hard to understand at the script stage because they’re very different. At the time I did them they were not conventional. The executives could only think in terms of what they’d already seen. It’s hard for them to think in terms of what has never been done before. — George Lucas

Could have been quote I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any ot
I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – thing I had no words for.

We throw away what we could have been and waste our opportunities. We each have a purpose, a destiny, and to realize it, we must reach beyond what we think we are capable of. — Colleen Houck

I feel there are so many things in this world that have been and are being created that I could spend the rest of my life thinking about, and I couldn’t cover all the things I’m interested in. That to me is what makes life sweet-learning and exploring. — James Franco

I think, like a lot of other people who have been in the service, you’d been delayed in what you were doing. You wanted to catch up and the best way to catch up was to move as fast as you could toward a degree. — Daniel J. Evans

Could have been quote It takes time to create excellence. If it could be done quickly, more people wou
It takes time to create excellence. If it could be done quickly, more people would do it.

If you give your life to a cause in which you believe, and if it is right and just, and if your life comes to an end as a result of this, then your life could not have been spent in a more redemptive way. I think that is what my husband has done. — Coretta Scott King

What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that’s what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. — Peter Cameron

Missing What Could Have Been Quotes

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Have you been drinking this morning? How did you miss me? I swear I’ve fought old women with better reflexes. (Takeshi) The fact you fight old women tells me just how rusty you’ve become. What? Your ego needed the boost and they were the only ones you could find you could beat? (Savitar) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

What would be awful would be to die and look back miserably – seeing only the bad things, the opportunities missed, or what could have been. — Audrey Hepburn

I supposed, perhaps, you miss the promise of what could have been, while at the same time you are grateful that what it was instead is over. — Sylvia Day

Could have been quote WIth freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy.
WIth freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy.

You might have to lose control before you could find out what you’d been missing. — Jodi Picoult

It Could Have Been Worse Quotes

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But hey, man, if I summited K2 in winter, without oxygen, frost-nipped fingers are a small price to pay. It was worth it. Think about it, things could have been a lot worse. — Nirmal Purja

Such is life and life is such and after all it isn’t much. First a cradle. Then a hearse. It might have been better, but it could have been worse. — Norman Wisdom

What happened to you could have been worse – it could have happened to me. — Ashleigh Brilliant

Could have been quote If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble,
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

There could have never been two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement. — Jane Austen

The word ‘happiness’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced and contrasted and compared to sadness. In comparing how an experience could have been worse we develop gratitude and happiness, while if we compare it how it could have been better we develop bitterness and sadness. — Carl Jung

But…as bad as it was, I learned something about myself. That I could go through something like that and survive. I mean, I know it could have been worse-a lot worse- but for me, it was all I could have handled at the time. And I learned from it. — Nicholas Sparks

Could have been quote Some people pass through our lives for a reason to teach us lessons that could n
Some people pass through our lives for a reason to teach us lessons that could never be learned if they stayed.

It could have been worse. I could have been born black. — Stevie Wonder

Any experience can be transformed into something of value. [ – worthy of enjoying by knowing it could have been worse.] — Vash Young

Sometimes I’m scared of being Ozzy Osbourne. But it could have been worse. I could have been Sting. — Ozzy Osbourne

There’s nothing wild about me. I’m a solid middle-aged man.” “Except that once a month you turn into a wolf and go tearing around slaughtering things,” Clary said. “It could be worse,” Luke said. “Men my age have been known to purchase expensive sports cars and sleep with supermodels. — Cassandra Clare

It Could Have Been Me Quotes

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The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it’s just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture “This is a pipe”, I’d have been lying! — Rene Magritte

It occurred to me that I just didn’t see how I could go ahead and continue to eat meat. It just seemed so… cannibalistic to me. And so, I’m a vegetarian, and I have been ever since. — Alice Paul

Whatever meaning ‘Annie’s Song’ had for me on a personal level, there was also a larger context. It could just as easily have been about love for a brother. Or a father. Or a friend. It could just as easily have been a prayer. — John Denver

Could have been quote So many times I wish I could've lived my life without making mistakes. In realit
So many times I wish I could’ve lived my life without making mistakes. In reality, a path like that doesn’t exist. We fall. We get lost. We make mistakes. We get up and Live.

I had gone away from Twitter because before people had been so mean to me. Talking about my lisp and my enormous forehead and all these things. I do have a lisp, I do have a forehead I know you could land a plane on, it’s no mystery to me. I just didn’t have the skin for it. — Sarah Paulson

Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them. — Susan B. Anthony

People spend a lifetime thinking abouthow they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me, it’s very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing ‘Love in the Time of Cholera.’ — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I wish I could say someone taught me my mental toughness, it would have been a lot less painful. — Kurt Warner

Keep your libraries, your penal institutions, your insaneasylums… give me beer.You think man needs rule, he needs beer. The world does not need morals, it needs beer… The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer. — Henry Miller

If she had touched me,” he said very softly, “I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me but I could not let her. No cat will. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them – but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay. — Peter S. Beagle

I don’t really regret much. I know there are things that I’ve done that have been wrong, and wish I could do over again, but I feel it’s all made me who I am today, and I’m very thankful for that. — Tim Tebow

Might Have Been Quotes

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It is never too late to be what you might have been. — George Eliot

Mr. Meant-to has a friend, his name is Didn’t-Do. Have you met them? They live together in a house called Never-Win. And I am told that it is haunted by the Ghost of Might-have-Been. — Marva Collins

It’s pretty clear now that what looked like it might have been some kind of counterculture is, in reality, just the plain old chaos of undifferentiated weirdness. — Jerry Garcia

I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past. — Clara Barton

I don’t think I was awake for much of my childhood. I did a lot of napping. This might have been a defensive measure against encroaching depression. Until about the age of eleven or twelve, I had zero interests other than trying to steal gumballs from supermarket gumball machines. — Michael Ian Black

Man is an idiot. He doesn’t know how to do anything without copying, without imitating, without plagiarizing, without aping. It might even have been that man invented generation by coitus after seeing the grasshopper copulate. — Augusto Roa Bastos

The war… was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forebearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides. — Robert E. Lee

This world crisis came about without women having anything to do with it. If the women of the world had not been excluded from world affairs, things today might have been different. — Alice Paul

If you listen to your fears, you will die never knowing what a great person you might have been. — Robert H. Schuller

The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. — Frederick Buechner

People Writing About Could Have Been

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Name Quotes Likes

Konrad Adenauerquotes on education, success and world

31 754

Pat Rileyquotes on teamwork, larry bird and excellence

74 1609

C. S. Lewisquotes on purpose, faith and love

1957 19120

Kurt Vonnegutquotes on writing, love and war

1005 5935

Dante Gabriel Rossettiquotes on love, life and art

33 262

Stephen Levinequotes on leadership, life and love

83 790

More Could Have Been Quotes

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Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph. — Haile Selassie

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others. — Eleanor Roosevelt

To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour. — Winston Churchill

I have frequently been questioned, especially by women, of how I could reconcile family life with a scientific career. Well, it has not been easy. — Marie Curie

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. — Jeremy Bentham

For years mental health professionals taught people that they could be psychologically healthy without social support, that “unless you love yourself, no one else will love you.”…The truth is, you cannot love yourself unless you have been loved and are loved. The capacity to love cannot be built in isolation — Bruce D. Perry

We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition. — Peter O’Toole

Until COVID, I thought that free speech was a protected fundamental right guaranteed to all citizens of the United States of America by the Bill of Rights. Having been assigned core texts like 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and The Trial and Death of Socrates in fourth and fifth grade as a “gifted and talented” student in the California school system of the time, I believed there was no way anything like what was written in those books could happen here in the USA during the 21st century. — Robert W. Malone

The countries of northern Europe have been richer than those of the south for several centuries. The north industrialized earlier than the south and so has been more economically successful. As many of the northern countries comprise the heartland of Western Europe, their trade links were easier to maintain, and one wealthy neighbor could trade with another — whereas the Spanish, for example, either had to cross the Pyrenees to trade, or look to the limited markets of Portugal and North Africa. — Tim Marshall

Facebook could have gone public whenever it wanted. We decided the right time was 2012. It could have easily been 2010 or 2014. — Chamath Palihapitiya

As the egalitarianism of Marxism is attractive to many, socialism could have attracted many followers in America, anyway. But there is no doubt that it could not possibly have affected us so widely and so deeply as it has, had it not been heavily financed. — B. Carroll Reece

And all this time when you could have been romping around the f*cking Garden of Eden f*cking hot girls and eating steaks and living a beautiful life you were worried about… — Duncan Trussell

You ask me whether I am in good spirits. How could I not be so? As long as Faith gives me strength I will always be joyful. Sadness ought to be banished from Catholic souls… the purpose for which we have been created shows us the path; even if strewn with many thorns, it is not a sad path. It is joyful even in the face of sorrow. — Pier Giorgio Frassati

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. — Henry David Thoreau

On a weekday morning that normally would have been spent chained to a desk, I mounted my bike for the first time in months and began pedaling toward the Santa Monica Mountains. Soon I was ascending Topanga Canyon, and as the sun rose into the clear blue skies above the ridgeline, I spotted a hawk. In a perfect symbiosis of air and wing, the majestic bird sailed its perfect arc across the morning sky. And that’s when I understood. If I could summon the courage to pursue my passion with purpose and without fear, I, too, could experience such synchronicity. Somehow, everything would work out. — Rich Roll

It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution. — Havelock Ellis

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. — Henry David Thoreau

No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you a playing a game. You are playing old man par. — Bobby Jones

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. — Albert Einstein

Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself. — Frida Kahlo

As far back as the 1970s, though, there have been observational studies that strongly suggested long-term calorie restriction could help humans live longer and healthier lives, too. — David Sinclair

It has actually been suggested that warfare may have been the principle evolutionary pressure that created the huge gap between the human brain and that of our closest living relatives, the anthropoid apes. Whole groups of hominids with inferior brains could not win wars and were therefore exterminated. — Jane Goodall

And we have abundant natural energy resources in the country. We haven’t been taking adequate advantage of them, and we can burn coal in a clean way; we could improve the grid. — John W. Snow

Let’s save some time here. I grow weary of your clumsy bluffs. In the case of an abduction, the LEP will send a crack Retrieval team to get back what has been lost.. You have done so. Excuse me while I titter. Crack team? Honestly. A Cub-Scout patrol armed with water pistols could have defeated them. — Eoin Colfer

The defeat of Japan in 1945 left Korea divided. North was a Communist regime overseen first by the Soviets and later by Communist China; south was a pro-American dictatorship. This was the very beginning of the Cold War era, when every inch of land was contested, with each side looking to establish influence or control around the world, unwilling to let the other maintain a sole presence. The choice of the 38th parallel as the line of division was unfortunate in many ways and arbitrary. Washington was so focused on the Japanese surrender that it had no real strategy for Korea. Two junior officers chose the 38th parallel as a place to suggest to the Soviets on the grounds that it was halfway down the country. No Koreans were present, nor any Korea experts. If they had been, they could have shared that that line was the same one that the Russians and Japanese had discussed for spheres of influence half a century earlier, following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5. Moscow, not knowing the Americans were making up policy on the fly, could be forgiven for thinking this was the U.S.’s de facto recognition of that suggestion and therefore acceptance of division and a Communist north. The nation was divided and the die was cast. — Tim Marshall

Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it – in a decade, a century, or a millennium – we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid? — John Archibald Wheeler

Because I was the first super-elite, the press caught on and started calling me a supermodel. So in that sense, I guess I’m the first. But, in my opinion, there were girls that could have been called supermodels before that, if the term was in existence. — Carol Alt

I saw my earlier selves as different people, acquaintances I had outgrown. I wondered how I could ever have been some of them. — Roger Zelazny

I really don’t think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try. — Nikki Giovanni

In Conclusion

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