If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there

If you don't know where you are going any road can take you there

If you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere. — HENRY KISSINGER

I've learned from long experience that every road leads somewhere, or there wouldn't be any road; so it's likely that if we travel long enough, my dear, we will come to some place or another in the end. What place it will be we can't even guess at this moment, but we're sure to find out when we get there.

If you don't know where you are going,
you'll end up someplace else.

And he didn't really know where he was going, but he did know he was going somewhere, because you really have to go somewhere, don't you?

Reagan Declares
Firmness on Gulf;
Plans are Unclear

Isn't that classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm!

"You don't even know where I'm going."
"I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere."

"In everyday life we must often act without delay, it is a most certain truth that when it is not in our power to discern the truest opinions, we must follow the most probable." (Discourse III, AT VI: 25/CSM I: 123)

[Descartes discusses a traveler lost in a forest to illustrate this. The traveler is lost, and he does not know how to get out of the woods. Descartes’ advice is that the traveler should pick a route, even if it is uncertain, and resolutely stick to it:

"Keep walking as straight as he can in one direction, never changing it for slight reasons even if mere chance made him choose it in the first place; for in this way, even if he does not go exactly where he wishes, he will at least end up in a place where he is likely to be better off than in the middle of a forest." (Ibid.)]

If you don't know where you want to go, then it doesn't matter which path you take.

Cliches became cliches for a reason; that they usually hold at least a modicum of truth, and the following cliche is truer than most: You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been.

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where — ” said Alice. “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat. — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it agian? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

"To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls."

-from "Song of the Open Road"