Quotes about anticipation
A collection of quotes on the topic of anticipation, use, time, timing.
Quotes about anticipation
Nahj al-Balagha

Disputed
“Attack is the proof that your enemy anticipates your success.”

Post-war discussion with Willem Sassen in Eichmanns Memoiren. Ein kritischer Essay (Zuerst 2001) Frankfurt/M.: Fischer TB, 2004 ISBN 3-5961-5726-9

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
Attributed to Hitchcock in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1984).

“Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.”

“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”

“Pleasure is found first in anticipation, later in memory.”

Søren Kierkegaard The Concept of Anxiety, Nichol p. 98-100 (1844)
About

“Wisdom consists of the anticipation of consequences.”
15 April 1978.
Saturday Review

Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzib, Volume III, Calcutta, 1928. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.62677/2015.62677.The-History-Of-Aurangzib-Voliii-Second-Edition_djvu.txt

In Orlando after the Orlando nightclub shooting ([President Obama: Orlando Families' Grief Is 'Beyond Description', Time, Maya, Rhodan, June 16, 2016, September 2, 2018, http://time.com/4372190/orlando-shooting-barack-obama-joe-biden-grief/]; [‘Our hearts are broken, too’: Obama visits survivors of Orlando rampage, Katie, Zezima, Ellen, Nakashima, Mark, Berman, June 16, 2016, September 2, 2018, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/06/16/obama-looks-toward-grieving-orlando-in-visit-as-political-showdowns-expand-after-massacre/]; [After meeting with Orlando victims, Obama renews call for gun control, Gregory, Korte, USA Today, June 16, 2016, September 6, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/06/16/obama-biden-visit-orlando-emotional-visit-after-shooting/85973066/]).
2016, After the Orlando nightclub shooting (June 2016)

“Jace Herondale. Once more a Herondale is the bringer of my deliverance. I should have anticipated.”
Brother Zachariah, to Jace Herondale, pg. 232
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)
George A. Kelly, "Man's construction of his alternatives." Assessment of human motives (1958): 33-64.

“What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.”
Book 2, chapter 4. Compare: "I say the very things that make the greatest Stir / An' the most interestin' things, are things that did n't occur", Sam Walter Foss, Things that did n't occur.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Henrietta Temple (1837)

Speech to reporters, 2006 Gridiron Dinner. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/chi-obama_senate_recordjun12-archive,0,3195588.story
2006

Source: What is Property? (1840), Ch. I: "Method Pursued in this Work. The Idea of a Revolution"
Property is theft! is a more famous translation of the original: La propriété, c'est le vol!

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1846/may/15/corn-importation-bill-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (15 May 1846).
1840s

Death (1912)
Context: It is childish to talk of happiness and unhappiness where infinity is in question. The idea which we entertain of happiness and unhappiness is something so special, so human, so fragile that it does not exceed our stature and falls to dust as soon as we go beyond its little sphere. It proceeds entirely from a few accidents of our nerves, which are made to appreciate very slight happenings, but which could as easily have felt everything the reverse way and taken pleasure in that which is now pain. We believe that we see nothing hanging over us but catastrophes, deaths, torments and disasters; we shiver at the mere thought of the great interplanetary spaces, with their cold and formidable and gloomy solitudes; and we imagine that the revolving worlds are as unhappy as ourselves because they freeze, or clash together, or are consumed in unutterable flames. We infer from this that the genius of the universe is an outrageous tyrant, seized with a monstrous madness, and that it delights only in the torture of itself and all that it contains. To millions of stars, each many thousand times larger than our sun, to nebulee whose nature and dimensions no figure, no word in our languages is able to express, we attribute our momentary sensibility, the little ephemeral and chance working of our nerves; and we are convinced that life there must be impossible or appalling, because we should feel too hot or too cold. It were much wiser to say to ourselves that it would need but a trifle, a few papilla more or less to our skin, the slightest modification of our eyes and ears, to turn the temperature, the silence and the darkness of space into a delicious spring-time, an unequalled music, a divine light. It were much more reasonable to persuade ourselves that the catastrophes which we think that we behold are life itself, the joy and one or other of those immense festivals of mind and matter in which death, thrusting aside at last our two enemies, time and space, will soon permit us to take part. Each world dissolving, extinguished, crumbling, burnt or colliding with another world and pulverized means the commencement of a magnificent experiment, the dawn of a marvelous hope and perhaps an unexpected happiness drawn direct from the inexhaustible unknown. What though they freeze or flame, collect or disperse, pursue or flee one another: mind and matter, no longer united by the same pitiful hazard that joined them in us, must rejoice at all that happens; for all is but birth and re-birth, a departure into an unknown filled with wonderful promises and maybe an anticipation of some unutterable event …
And, should they stand still one day, become fixed and remain motionless, it will not be that they have encountered calamity, nullity or death; but they will have entered into a thing so fair, so great, so happy and bathed in such certainties that they will for ever prefer it to all the prodigious chances of an infinity which nothing can impoverish.

Source: Last Flight (1937), p. 70
Context: In my life I had come to realize that when things were going very well indeed it was just the time to anticipate trouble. And, conversely, I learned from pleasant experience that at the most despairing crisis, when all looked sour beyond words, some delightful "break" was apt to lurk just around the corner.

Exposition 2 of Psalm 108. The unity and perpetuity of the Church against the Donatists.
Expositions of the Psalms 99-120 (The Works of Saint Augustine, Vol 19 Part 3), Boniface Ramsey, ed., Maria Boulding, O.S.B, tr., New City Press, , pp. 68-69 http://books.google.com/books?id=3iWSkxuvyQ4C&pg=PA68&dq=%22So+say+people+who+are+not+within+the+Church.+What+an+impudent+assertion%22&hl=en&ei=-MlfTI7XKIHGlQeZ0JCZCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22So%20say%20people%20who%20are%20not%20within%20the%20Church.%20What%20an%20impudent%20assertion%22&f=false
Expositions on the Psalms
Context: God is one, and the Church is a unity; only unity can respond to him who is one. But there are some people why say, “Yes, that certainly was the case. The Church spread among all nations did respond to him, bearing more children than did the wedded wife. It responded to him in the way of his strength, for it believed that Christ had risen. All nations believed in him. But that Church which was drawn from all nations no longer exists: it has perished.”
So say people who are not within the Church. What an impudent assertion! The Church does not exist because you are not in it? Be careful lest such an attitude result in your not existing yourself, for the Church will be here even if you are not. But the Spirit of God anticipated this abominable, detestable assertion, this claim full of presumption and falsehood, a claim with nothing to support it, illumined by no spark of wisdom, seasoned by no salt. God’s Spirit anticipated this empty, unfounded, foolhardy and pernicious proposition and seemingly refuted it in advance by proclaiming that the Church is united by the gathering of the people together into one, and kingdoms to serve the Lord.

Letter to John Jay (15 August 1786) http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/constitution/1784/jay2.html
1780s
Context: If you tell the Legislatures they have violated the treaty of peace and invaded the prerogatives of the confederacy they will laugh in your face. What then is to be done? Things cannot go on in the same train forever. It is much to be feared, as you observe, that the better kind of people being disgusted with the circumstances will have their minds prepared for any revolution whatever. We are apt to run from one extreme into another. To anticipate & prevent disasterous contingencies would be the part of wisdom & patriotism.
What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable & tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal & falacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend.
Retired as I am from the world, I frankly acknowledge I cannot feel myself an unconcerned spectator. Yet having happily assisted in bringing the ship into port & having been fairly discharged; it is not my business to embark again on a sea of troubles. Nor could it be expected that my sentiments and opinions would have much weight on the minds of my Countrymen — they have been neglected, tho' given as a last legacy in the most solemn manner. I had then perhaps some claims to public attention. I consider myself as having none at present.

“Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.”

Source: "Interview with Gong Yoo and Bae Doona, stars of The Silent Sea" in The Hindu https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/watch-interview-with-gong-yoo-and-bae-doona-stars-of-the-silent-sea/article38024567.ece (24 December 2021)
“Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure.”
Source: The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

“Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life.”

“Anticipating pain was like enduring it twice. Why not anticipate pleasure instead?”
Source: Renegade's Magic
“They say anticipation makes pleasure more intense.”
Source: Quicksand
“It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart—never the sensation of the moment.”
Source: Threshold

“For every hand extended another lies in wait. Keep your eye on that one girl… anticipate.”

“One must plan for the future and anticipate the future without fearing the future.”
Source: Ship of Magic
Source: The Ape Who Guards the Balance
Source: The Velvet Room


Source: Capitalism and Modern Social Theory (1971), pp. 230-231.

“It was anticipating self-defense.”
On why he once hit a catcher in the face mask while playing minor league baseball, CBS TV (December 30, 1984)

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 46

Cults, Sects and Questions (c. 1979)
Source: Metasystems Methodology, (1989), p.xi cited in Philip McShane (2004) Cantower VII http://www.philipmcshane.ca/cantower7.pdf

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. vii-viii

“The voyage appeared short, for I had nothing to anticipate.”
Other Gift Books

"Physics is always a gamble" http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/interview/nobel-laureate-david-gross-physics-is-always-a-gamble/article7383717.ece, an interview with David Gross by Shubashree Desikan, The Hindu (2015)

Malwa (Madhya Pradesh) . Khwaja Mas'ud bin Sa'd bin Salman:Diwan-i-Salman in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Vol. IV, pp. 518 ff.
Tideman and Tullock 1976
James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and The Calculus (2012)
David Aberle (1961: 387), quoted in: William E. Willmott (1972) Economic Organization in Chinese Society,

"Because it makes my father sound so paranoid," was her response.
"But if it was the truth, then he was not paranoid, he was simply perceptive."
Source: Final Analysis (1990), pp. 175-176

archive.defensenews.com interview http://archive.defensenews.com/article/20131119/DEFREG02/311190032/Interview-Ashton-Carter-US-Deputy-Defense-Secretary

“Wait for it, wait for it! Anticipation is half the fun. So I've been told…”
Live at Wembley Stadium DVD (July 1987)

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 474

September 1, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/09/01/BL2005090100915.html
2000s, 2005

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 32; Cited in: Philip Pilkington, " Gunnar Myrdal’s Prescient Criticisms of Keynes’ General Theory http://fixingtheeconomists.wordpress.com/2013/08/10/gunnar-myrdals-prescient-criticisms-of-keynes-general-theory/" Posted on August 10, 2013
"An Effusion", from Poems, on Various Occasions (1806)

He commented criticizing the heavy taxation that was creating surpluses and the need to have a say in the matter by the representatives of the people. Pages=696-97
Sources of Indian Tradition