Expectations quotes
1.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside expectations — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Audiences crave something they've never seen before. That's what they want. They want to be dazzled. They want to go in either to have their expectations blown out of the water, or have no expectations and are dazzled by the decisions that we filmmakers made."
"Expectations send unconscious signals that people respond to."
"The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel-the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come."
"They lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn."
"Expectations are the engines of our perceptions."
"You create your reality according to your beliefs and expectations, therefore you should examine these carefully. If you do not like some aspect of your world, then examine your own expectations."
"Surprise comes from defying expectations."
"A person of “good character” was one who acted in accordance with the expectations of his community"
"After I won the Heisman Trophy, it just was OK, I’m supposed to go to the NFL and so that’s what I did. I didn’t really have any expectations and I didn’t really understand how things worked."
"I keep my expectations low, so nobody disappoints me." "Yeah, well, I have high expectations." I look toward Miranda. "I guess my friends do, too." "Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier."
"We'll do what life always does defy expectations."
"The joy that comes past hope and beyond expectation is like no other pleasure in extent."
"What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you."
"All interesting issues in natural history are questions of relative frequency, not single examples. Everything happens once amidst the richness of nature. But when an unanticipated phenomenon occurs again and again—finally turning into an expectation—then theories are overturned."
"If new species arise very rapidly in small, peripherally isolated local populations, then the great expectation of insensibly graded fossil sequences is a chimera. A new species does not evolve in the area of its ancestors; it does not arise from the slow transformation of all its forbears. co-author with Niles Eldridge"
"People live up to your expectations, not their potential."
"The people around whom I've lived most of my life, they're similar. They have same expectations of life that aren't exaggerated, they could be accomplished, they could get what they want. But they could not, too. It's not to be taken for granted. Even getting by, and being satisfied, barely, is hard."
"I never aspire to be objective because I don't believe in objectivity. It's important to be truthful, and it's important to make sure that the audience has a solid sense of what the expectation should be of a particular film."
"That even an apocalypse can be made to seem part of the ordinary horizon of expectation constitutes an unparalleled violence that is being done to our sense of reality, to our humanity."
"I really, really try to be a good servant. It makes me happy when I'm a good giver without expectations."
