“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Variant: Life can only be understood going backward, but must be lived going forward.
“Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.”
Source: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay
Journals IV A 164 (1843)
See Phenomenology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, by Dermot Moran (2002)
Variants:
We live forward, but we understand backward.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s
“Though life has to be lived forward, it can only be understood backwards”
Source: Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter
“Life can only be understood backward; the trouble is, it has to be lived forward.”
In The Light of what We Know (2014)
