“When people expect that what they give will be commensurate with what they will get. They must remember one thing, that often life does not work that way. They must be prepared to be disappointed.”

Last update Nov. 30, 2023. History

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Karma yoga
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 4 February 1984.

“John Dewey's Human Nature and Conduct…What struck me… was the related idea that human thought is a reaction to frustrated habit— what people often do when the outcome of their action disappoints their expectation. I concluded that unthinking, habitual action is the natural and truly happy way of life; whereas thought is a symptom of dysfunction but conducive to survival all the same since, every so often, new thoughts find ways of escaping the frustration that provoked them by inventing satisfying new ways to get things done.”

William H. McNeill (1917–2016) Canadian historian

The Pursuit of Truth: A Historian's Memoir (2005)

“The one thing we can say is that if Socrates really expected to get a definitive answer to his question, 'What is justice?' when talking to his friends on their way back to the Piraeus, he has been disappointed. It remains a contentious and disputed subject.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

Justice (1993)

“The binding power of custom is its security of expectations. What has happened before may be expected to happen again, and he who arbitrarily disappoints expectations must be restrained or punished.”

John R. Commons (1862–1945) United States institutional economist and labor historian

Source: Legal foundations of capitalism. 1924, p. 301

“… if you expect people to try to do things your way, you're going to have to give some hints as to what that way is.”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

“does a sick society get so used to its illness that it can't remember being well? what if the memory is too dangerous for the people who like things the way they are?”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

“How is a man to find where he belongs in life? The more original he is, the less likely is he to find his place prepared for him. He must not expect to see from the beginning what mould his life will take… The power to work on faith is what distinguishes great men.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 111

“To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. (…) What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions: the goal and the way must not be on different levels, life and light must not quarrel; behavior must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness; you must not go back, undo, uproot, abandon the conquered ground. (…)”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Integrity
Source: "I am That." P.12-3.

“One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3
Context: Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen were something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting.
One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.

“To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Decorative Arts (1877)
Context: To give people pleasure in the things they must perforce use, that is one great office of decoration; to give people pleasure in the things they must perforce make, that is the other use of it.
Does not our subject look important enough now? I say that without these arts, our rest would be vacant and uninteresting, our labour mere endurance, mere wearing away of body and mind.

“When people expect that what they give will be commensurate with what they will get. They must remember one thing, that often life does not work that way. They must be prepared to be disappointed.”

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