Quotes About Expectations

If I fulfill YOUR expectations, how am I going to transform you? I have to DESTROY your expectations. I have to destroy the very mind that creates those expectations. If you come to me, never come with expectations, otherwise you will be disappointed - because I have no obligation to fulfill your expectations in any way. In fact, if I see that there are some expectations, I do things DELIBERATELY to destroy those expectations. That is the price you have to pay to be with me.

The secret to happiness is to lower your expectations. ...that is what you compare your experience with. If your expectations and standards are very high and only allow yourself to be happy when things are exquisite, you'll never be happy and grateful. There will always be some flaw. But compare your experience with lower expectations, especially something not as good, and you'll find much in your experience of the world to love, cherish and enjoy, every single moment.

I don't burden myself too much with others' expectations - or even my own expectations. I think your happiness grows in direct proportion to your acceptance, and in inverse proportion to your expectations. It's just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other - or doing the next right thing, so to speak.

The phrase 'contrary to all expectations' rings through the story of the progress of human knowledge. It was 'contrary to all expectations' that the Earth was found to revolve around the sun, and not the other way round, and that a mould growing in one of Dr. Alexander Fleming's dishes was found to be capable of destroying bacteria. When in 1989 the spacecraft Voyager 2 got close enough to the planet Naptune to take detailed pictures of the surface, they were 'contrary to all expectations'.

The first step in exceeding your customer's expectations is to know those expectations.

I don't have expectations. Expectations in your life just lead to giant disappointments.

Great teachers have high expectations for their students, but higher expectations for themselves.

Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations.

One of the most difficult features of direct experience is that it is unfiltered by any theories or expectations. It's hard to observe without imposing a theory to explain what we're seeing, but the trouble with theories, as Einstein said, is that they explain not only what is observed, but what can be observed. We start to build expectations based on our theories.

Living up to other people's expectations is always difficult. And then you have your own expectations and you set yourself goals that are very, very high. And that's true for everyone.

Meeting expectations is good. Exceeding expectations is better.

Don't lower your expectations to meet your performance. Raise your level of performance to meet your expectations. Expect the best of yourself, and then do what is necessary to make it a reality.

Honestly, you can't manage expectations. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with everyone else. And everyone else is going to have expectations, and all you can do is do your job and do your best and be true to yourself.

If we treat people as who they can become, they will be inspired to rise to the level of our expectations.

As long as I focus on what I feel and don't worry about where I'm going, it works out. Having no expectations but being open to everything is what makes wonderful things happen. If I don't worry, there's no obstruction and life flows easily. It sounds impractical, but 'Expect nothing; be open to everything' is really all it is.

Sometimes you'll have a movie that you're very proud of and you think it transcended all of your expectations but it doesn't come out at the right time. I have done movies that have never been released. That can be depressing.

We are often less grieved at disappointments than at ourselves for having said much concerning the certainty of our expectations.

No marshmallows. "I don't believe this! I'm going to write the president of General Mills! Don't they have any quality control?" "I'm sure it's just a fluke" "Doesn't make any difference whether it's a fluke or not. It shouldn't have happened. When a person buys a box of lucky charms he's got expectations

Masturbation is not only an expression of self-regard: it is also the natural emotional outlet of those who...have already accepted as inevitable the wide gulf between their real futures and the expectations of their fantasies.

Expectations are resentments waiting to happen

Every time I felt the pain coming on I'd go downstairs and hammer out an idea. After a few months I started to take a look at what I was making, I had for the first time in my life written a large grip of songs completely alone and without any expectations or plans of what they would be for.

If you paint in your mind a picture of bright and happy expectations, you put yourself into a condition conducive to your goal.

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man!

Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations. Because we are imperfect beings who are self-blinded to the truth of the world’s stunning complexity, we shave reality to paper thin theories and ideologies that we can easily grasp – and we call them truths. But the truth of a sea in all it’s immensity cannot be embodied in one tidewashed pebble.

I think sometimes your worst enemy is inside your head. All your insecurities, your ego, your fears, your expectations.

That is still the case in this country for too many students, the soft bigotry of low expectations. If you don't expect them to learn, if you don't expect them to succeed - then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.

Rely on the ordinary virtues that intelligent, balanced human beings have relied on for centuries: common sense, thrift, realistic expectations, patience, and perseverance.

I'm interested in the self. And in the limits and transformations of self. And in self presentation. And in doubt. And in playing with the audience's expectations. But I don't like dressing up like on Halloween.

Sociotropic voters with biased economic beliefs are more likely to produce severe political failures than are selfish voters with rational expectations.

On the New England Patriots losing the Super Bowl after going 18-0: We set high expectations, now we go down as 18-1, and that is one big zit. It is one big blemish. We choked.

I don't have any expectations.

I try not to think of myself as a woman filmmaker. I don't look for women influences. I have noticed in the past few years that there is a certain ceiling that a woman filmmaker can reach. I don't believe that it's sexism per se, but there are certain expectations in the industry about what films should be, how they should be made, what stories they should tell, and it's a habit, it's a tradition.

We live in a really crazy time when there is information coming at you, and there are so many demands on your time. It really comes down to choosing your own priorities and forgiving yourself a lot and checking your own expectations.

When a man has written a role for you that you admire, the expectations are higher.

I am constantly pushing myself and my own expectations and have always found that I've always come out better for it. Fear is human nature, but turning fear into opportunity is what will make a difference. I would much rather look back at my life saying "I can't believe I did that," than, "What if I had done that?"

And indeed if you think you're a genius at something, what you achieve is very much according to your expectations; if you think you're no good, you're not going to get anywhere.

I think the media makes it tough to play in New York. There are so many papers and TV channels covering the Knicks and the expectations for the Knicks are so high.

It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.

Weddings are giant Rorschach tests onto which everyone around you projects their fears, fantasies, and expectations - many of which they've been cultivating since the day you were born.

One of the smartest things a person can do is dampen investment expectations, especially with Berkshire. That would be mature and responsible. I like our model and we should do nicely

The good thing is that women have such high expectations of men that it inspires us to live up to them. That's what I learned about male-female relationships.

It's always good to have no expectations when you see a film. Then you can be pleasantly disappointed or surprised.

Loving, hating, having expectations: all these are attachments. Attachment prevents the growth of one's true being.

I had these kind of unrealistic expectations that were fueled by romantic comedies, and it has both helped me and hurt me in many ways. It helped me because, in general, they've made me hopeful. I just figure things will eventually work out for me. But nobody is like any Tom Hanks character. Nobody is Hugh Grant. No one is Meg Ryan!

The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life

Laughter lifts our spirits, surprises and sometime shocks our expectations, allows us to cross boundaries, reorders our priorities, and gives us access to ideas and associations we rarely ever thought to have.

In England especially, poetry's woven into the background fabric of society. And in Ireland, it's in the foreground. The place of the poet in Irish society is enormous. If you say you're a poet in Ireland, you'd better know what you're doing, because the standard and the expectations are incredibly high.