With an impressive display of foresight, he bought a 10m square metre tract of land in 1973 on the western edge of Barra overlapping Jacarepaguá, which was then a sparsely populated swamp, forest and abandoned coffee plantation.
Animals may not be able to display humour, foresight or mercy, but their lack of imagination, inventiveness and ambition are hardly to be decried when these qualities are spurring our own species to destroy both us and them.
And, in perhaps his greatest display of foresight, he opened branches of Ollie's and Carmine's, and another restaurant, Virgil's Real BBQ, near Times Square just before the redevelopment of Times Square took off.
One wonders how many headteachers will display the foresight to sacrifice the additional monies on offer (for a limited period only!) for the greater good of education remaining at least partially under state control.
In a remarkable display of foresight, Hirsch helped usher in the age of electronic networks by building a global infrastructure of terminals.
In the case of Pixar, though, he has displayed only foresight, combined with luck.
The board explained that the executives were among the best in the industry and that Mr. Wise had "displayed exceptional foresight".
Turning liquid crystals from curiosities into the ubiquitous technologies that they are today required both a burning need for new displays and the foresight of one of the more colourful government ministers.
Even non-subscribers might recall the dream team she assembled for "Three Sisters" back in 1992, which included Linda Hunt, Mary Stuart Masterson and Frances McDormand, or the foresight she displayed in coaxing the opera director Stephen Wadsworth -- the only American the French still truly love -- to direct Marivaux on the McCarter stage.
None of them is a saint, but the roles they played in the collapse of communism seem to confirm what we want to believe: that there are times when human beings can display qualities of leadership that demonstrate wisdom, tenacity, foresight and determination.
Most will also have a ready-made argument for why it was inevitable that Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama, won — displaying the sort of false, after-the-fact "foresight" that psychologists call hindsight bias.
