“Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.”
Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
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Howard Zinn 69
author and historian 1922–2010Related quotes
“Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“A depression is a situation of self-fulfilling pessimism.”
Source: Economic Heresies (1971), Chapter II, The Short Period, p. 23
Source: Sustainable History and the Dignity of Man (2009), p.219
“We were young, and we had no need for prophecies. Just living was itself an act of prophecy.”
Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Thirteen, The Whole- Earth Conspiracy
90th Birthday Reflections (2007)
Context: Communication technologies are necessary, but not sufficient, for us humans to get along with each other. This is why we still have many disputes and conflicts in the world. Technology tools help us to gather and disseminate information, but we also need qualities like tolerance and compassion to achieve greater understanding between peoples and nations.
I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I hope we've learnt something from the most barbaric century in history — the 20th. I would like to see us overcome our tribal divisions and begin to think and act as if we were one family. That would be real globalisation…