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Expectations Quotes

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Expectations Quotes

“Although a person acting under authority performs actions that seem to violate standards of conscience, it would not be true to say that he loses his moral sense. Instead, it acquires a radically different focus. He does not respond with a moral sentiment to the actions he performs. Rather, his moral concern now shifts to a consideration of how well he is living up to the expectations that the authority has of him.”

“The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valery once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations.”

“Crime, especially crime involving money, reflects the gap between the expectation to provide and the ability to provide... If we really want men to commit crime as infrequently as women, we can start by not expecting men to provide for women more than we expect women to provide for men.”

“The most unacknowledged spending expectation among women is the amount of time spent by single mothers caring for children, not only physically, but psychologically. It is my feeling that only a small percentage of a mother's time is normally compensated for by child support, given what a woman could make adding these hours to workforce hours. It is why women who have never been married and never had children earn so much more in the workplace than women who have had children.”

“I never worried about teams who spend what they want to spend. It never bothered me. At the moment we have a lot of Middle Eastern owners, we have American owners of course, Russian owners. It never bothered me one bit. All I was concerned about was that we at United maintained our level of expectation, be competitive, be at the top part of the Premier League.”

“So many women have experienced horrific forms of male violence throughout their lives, and why isn't there a song about how you get depressed because of it? And you don't know what to do, and you don't know how to talk to your friends and how weird it is to be a feminist in that situation, where there's sort of the expectation that you're super-strong superwoman but you're just, like, eating pizza in your house avoiding talking about it.”

“Digital technologies are setting down the new grooves of how people live, how we do business, how we do everything--and they're doing it according to the expectations of foolish utopian scenarios. We want free online experiences so badly that we are happy to not be paid for information that comes from us now or ever. That sensibility also implies that the more dominant information becomes in our economy, the less most of us will be worth.”

“The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony-unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil--was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith.”

“Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us.”

“What makes a date so dreadful is the weight of expectation attached to it. There is every chance that you may meet your soulmate, get married, have children and be buried side by side. There is an equal chance that the person you meet will look as if they've already been buried for some time.”

“But to demand that a work be “relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her. If the concept of identification suggested that an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an individual's solipsism.”

“Zen, like life, defies exact definition, but its essence is the experience, moment by moment, of our own existence -- a natural, spontaneous encounter, unclouded by the suppositions and expectations that come between us and reality. It is, if you like, a paring down of life until we see it as it really is, free from our illusions; it is merely a divestment of ourselves until we recognize our own true nature.”

“This gathered worship, as Quakers call it, is not only absence of noise. Gathered worship springs from the reverent, silent expectation that God will come among the people. The silence deepens as we feel ourselves drawn beautifully to God and each other. Our hearts and souls burst with thanksgiving-a thanksgiving best expressed by silence. Silence growing from awe is the natural human response to hints of the Divine.”

“Fate often allows a future to take shape with no regard for our expectation, plan, or readiness. Fate's skillful editing of our life choices is like the careful grooming of lads on their first day of school: combed, polished, scrubbed, newly dressed, and glowing too. This is how we become ready for our life lessons.”

“Our parents, our tribesman, our authority figures, clearly expect us to be bad or anti-social or greedy or selfish or dirty or destructive or self-destructive. Our social nature is such that we tend to meet the expectations of our elders. Whenever this reversal took place and our elders stopped expecting us to be social and expected us to be anti-social, just to put it in gross terms, that's when the real fall took place. And we're paying for it dearly.”

“Although the needs of babies have changed very little over the millennia, over the past decades, female equality in education and occupational opportunities has altered maternal expectations. This renders baby-care requirements discordant with ambition for many mothers, and produces heartfelt dilemmas for others.”

“All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles - someone to hold them, read to them, teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.”

“(Because) the notion of absolute truth is difficult to sustain outside the context of religion, ethical conduct is not something we engage in because it is somehow right in itself but because, like ourselves, all others desire to be happy and to avoid suffering. Given that this is a natural disposition, shared by all, it follows that each individual has a right to pursue this goal. Accordingly, I suggest that one of the things which determines whether an act is ethical or not is its effect on others' experience or expectation of happiness.”

“A marriage bound together by commitments to exploit the other for filling one's own needs (and I fear that most marriages are built on such a basis) can legitimately be described as a "tic on a dog" relationship. Just as a hungry tic clamps on to a nourishing host in anticipation of a meal, so each partner unites with the other in the expectation of finding what his or her personal nature demands. The rather frustrating dilemma, of course, is that in such a marriage there are two tics and no dog!”

“Live Free or Die Hard may work better for an audience that doesn't know much about the series is than it will for Die Hard die hards, who will be wondering who that impersonator is and what he did with the real John McClane. The original Die Hard came out of nowhere to blitz the 1988 summer box office. The fourth installment arrives with a weight of expectations that Atlas would have trouble shouldering and, when the dust settles in September, it's unlikely that Live Free or Die Hard will be one of this year's big success stories.”

“It's rare that the sequel to a good movie lives up to expectations. Such is the case with Die Hard 2, the somewhat-muddled but still entertaining return of Bruce Willis' John McClane. Fortunately, the original Die Hard was good enough that there's room for the second installment to be enjoyable while still not matching the pace or possessing the flair of its predecessor.”

“The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable.”

“Love is a gift, a miracle, a mystery. You are led to its threshold by your affinities, by your inclinations, and by the yearnings of your heart, although its power and presentation is by grace, not by expectation, demand, or requirement. Love is the ultimate paradox, for it is the lamb that is also the lion. Love is the ultimate power, which resides in surrender.”

“I believe I've spent my life expecting people to behave in a certain way. I believe that when they didn't behave according to my expectations, I became angry, sad, confused and occasionally fearful. I believe these expectations are the reason I've been angry, sad, confused and occasionally fearful more than I care to admit. As a result, I now believe my expectations are the real problem. I believe that everyone has this very same problem, and they ought to start acting accordingly.”