Expectations quotes
1.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside expectations — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Sometimes, we're so focused on being consistent that we also lower the bar on amazing. After all, the thinking goes, if we can't be amazing all the time, better to reset the expectation to merely good. Which robs us of the ability to (sometimes) be amazing."
"Great boss is challenging people in the right way. Leading, not managing. Supporting them by giving them both a platform they can count on and expectations they can stretch for."
"I modeled for a little while in college. I was desperate to travel, and I got scouted, and they wanted me to go to Paris and London for six months. And I discovered that I hated it. I didn't like the expectation to be pretty all the time."
"I see knowledge increasing and human power increasing, I see everincreasing possibilities before life, and I see no limits set to it all. Existence impresses me as a perpetual dawn. Our lives, as I apprehend them, swim in expectation."
"We're not really brought up in a culture where we believe we're meant to be happy, that peace is our birthright. It's not what we're taught; quite the opposite, actually. With all the expectations and the negative stories going on in the world, we have a lot to overcome."
"Coach Morris wasn't too hard on me, not at all. Being drafted where I was at, there were high expectations for me. I still have high expectations for myself."
"The expectation of my life was that I might be able to work for some good white folks. Now I got some good white folks working for me."
"The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life"
"Modern science is under no obligation to satisfy the expectations of your five senses."
"With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered. Freedom is exhausting."
"I had no expectation of the level of adulation that would come my way. I just wanted to make a living with a regular role in a television series."
"When fortune surprises us by giving us some great office without having gradually led us to expect it, or without having raised our hopes, it is well nigh impossible to occupy it well, and to appear worthy to fill it."
"I don't like to have really any expectations for myself."
"The thing we look forward to often comes to pass, but never precisely in the way we have imagined to ourselves."
"Every year strips us of at least one vain expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its stead."
"Girls have all the same parts, basically, and so much of how they look depends on the attitude, expectations, and obsessions of those who are looking at them."
"The best use of history is as an inoculation against radical expectations, and hence against embittering disappointments."
"Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history."
"Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised."
"One reason that a lot of people see me as cheerful and optimistic is that my expectations are really rather low."
