Failure & regret

If you could edit your past, what would you change?

205 answers answered between 1995 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A

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The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 3 Arts and letters 171 Politics and public life 17 Business and finance 5 Technology 1 Sport 8
Read by age Any age Before thirty 6 In their thirties 39 In their forties 45 In their fifties 45 In their sixties 37 Seventy and beyond 28
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Jimmy Carter 39th President of the United States, 1977–1981; Governor of Georgia 1971–1975
I wish I sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued then and I - I would have been re-elected, but that may have - and that may have interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center. And if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center.
Recorded News conference at the Carter Center, Atlanta, as transcribed by CNN, 20 August 2015 source ↗
John Simpson English journalist
I would have behaved better to my first wife, and the girl I lived with afterwards. I was always away.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 December 2016 source ↗
Gloria Steinem Writer and feminist organiser
Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 March 2017 source ↗
Edwina Currie Former British politician, broadcaster and writer
I would be richer, I’d have beaten Mrs Thatcher’s ban on women in the cabinet, and I would be a dame.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 June 2017 source ↗

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