1999
Quotes about expectation
page 2
1978
“Expect the best. Prepare for the worst. Capitalize on what comes.”
As quoted in Trigger Events – How To Find Your Next Customer (2007) by Alen Majer, p. 22

“Keep your expectations tiny you'll go through life not so whiney.”

“Oh, did you expect me to play fair?" Cupid laughed. "I am the god of love. I am never fair.”
Source: The House of Hades

“I never expect a perfect work from an imperfect man.”

Source: In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development

“My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus.”
As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)
Unsourced variant: "When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have."

Source: A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
Source: The Prophecy Answer Book

“Expectation is the root of all heartache.”

“He had about the same life expectancy as a three legged hedgehog on a six lane motorway.”

The Crisis No. IV.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)


“Just keep your conscious mind busy with expectation of the best.”
Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind
Source: The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God
Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.”
Casus ubique valet; semper tibi pendeat hamus
Quo minime credas gurgite, piscis erit.
Book III, line 425
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)
Source: Heroides
Context: Chance is always powerful. Let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.

Source: The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
“Expectations destroy our peace of mind. They are future disappointments, planned out in advance.”

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 164
Context: Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them. Resistance is only a waste of strength.

“That's the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don't expect them or want them.”
Source: If You Could See Me Now

“Whoever submits himself to a super-discipline can expect great triumphs.”

“Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.”
Source: The Fountainhead

“Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Context: Experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. Men wrongly complain of Experience; with great abuse they accuse her of leading them astray but they set Experience aside, turning from it with complaints as to our ignorance causing us to be carried away by vain and foolish desires to promise ourselves, in her name, things that are not in her power; saying that she is fallacious. Men are unjust in complaining of innocent Experience, constantly accusing her of error and of false evidence.

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)

“no expectations, no disappointments!”
Sleeping with Strangers

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym [O Demônio e a srta Prym] (2000), p. x; this has also been misquoted as "A moment is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny."
Context: When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”
Source: Tropic of Cancer

“Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.”

“Never expect God to do for you what you don't do to others.”

“Sometimes the key to happiness is just expecting a little bit less”
Source: Between the Lines

“How can we expect something positive to come from all the negative that we put into this world?”
speech at Florida International University, "Live, Art and Spirituality" (October 14, 2006)
2007, 2008

Quote in Life History Of E.V.Ramasamy, Priyar Center http://www.periyarcentre.in/abtperiyar.html
Reform

2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)

Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 43
1930s-1951

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)

“Ain't nobody expect Kanye to end up on top
They expected that College Dropout to drop and then flop”
Last Call
Lyrics, The College Dropout (2004)

Martin Scorsese http://www.flixster.com/actor/leonardo-di-caprio/leonardo-dicaprio-quotes
About

Dick Gregory's Political Primer (Harper & Row, 1972), p. 262.

Letter to Alfred Galpin (27 May 1918), published in Letters to Alfred Galpin edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 18
Non-Fiction, Letters

"Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)

From Interview to the author , in Osamu Tezuka, Jumping ; quoted in AA.VV., Osamu Tezuka: A Manga Biography , vol. 4, translated by Marta Fogato, Coconino Press, Bologna, 2001, p. 178. ISBN 8888063188

“Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.”
The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships (2015)

Speech to the Knesset, reported in Ner (October 1961)

Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3). Yahuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 2006 Online Version at Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220