Quotes about expectation
page 20

Leo Ryan photo
Joe Biden photo
Shankar Dayal Sharma photo
Chuck Jones photo
William Howard Taft photo

“We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Address at a banquet given by the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce of Washington, D.C., May 8, 1909.; found in Presidential Addresses and State Papers of William Howard Taft, vol. 1, chapter 7, p. 82 (1910).

Alicia Silverstone photo
André Maurois photo
Steven Erikson photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo
Jacob Bernoulli photo
Melissa Lee photo

“I am expecting to come second, at least…I am not putting in all these hours and putting up with media trying to come second, I am not…I am trying to win this damn thing.”

Melissa Lee (1966) New Zealand politician

Nats ask Act MP to lay off Melissa Lee, Patrick, Gower, The New Zealand Herald, 23 May 2009, 2010-07-13 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10574128,
After the radio interview
Mount Albert by-election campaign, 2009

Max Horkheimer photo
Morrissey photo
Warren Farrell photo

“One grand fallacy of the women's movement: Expecting work to mean "power" and "self-fulfillment."”

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 232.

James Randi photo
Alex Salmond photo
George E. P. Box photo
Adolf Eichmann photo

“I'd like to say something about this last, about this last point of this terrible, terrible business. I mean Treblinka. I was given orders. I went to see Globocnik in Treblinka. That was the second time. The installations were now in operation, and I had to report to Müller. I expected to see a wooden house on the right side of the road and a few more wooden houses on the left; that's what I remembered. Instead, again with the same Sturmbannführer Höfle, I came to a railroad station with a sign saying Treblinka, looking exactly like a German railroad station — anywhere in Germany — a replica, with signboards, etc. There I hung back as far as I could. I didn't push closer to see it all. I saw a footbridge enclosed in barbed wire and over that footbridge a file of naked Jews was being driven into a house, a big… no, not a house, a big, one-room structure, to be gassed. As I was told, they were gassed with …what's it called? … Potassium cyanide… or cyanic acid. In acid form it's called cyanic acid. I didn't look to see what happened. I reported to Müller and as usual he listened in silence, without a word of comment. Just his facial expression said: "There's nothing I can do about it."”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

I am convinced, Herr Hauptmann, [Eichmann is referring to his interrogator, Avner Less] I know it sounds odd coming from me, but I'm convinced that if it had been up to Müller it wouldn't have happened.
Source: Eichmann Interrogated (1983), p. 84.

Bell Hooks photo

“The understanding I had by age thirteen of patriarchal politics created in me expectations of the feminist movement that were quite different from those of young, middle class, white women. When I entered my first women's studies class at Stanford University in the early 1970s, white women were revelling in the joy of being together-to them it was an important, momentous occasion. I had not known a life where women had not been together, where women had not helped, protected, and loved one another deeply. I had not known white women who were ignorant of the impact of race and class on their social status and consciousness (Southern white women often have a more realistic perspective on racism and classism than white women in other areas of the United States.) I did not feel sympathetic to white peers who maintained that I could not expect them to have knowledge of or understand the life experiences of black women. Despite my background (living in racially segregated communities) I knew about the lives of white women, and certainly no white women lived in our neighborhood, attended our schools, or worked in our homes When I participated in feminist groups, I found that white women adopted a condescending attitude towards me and other non-white participants. The condescension they directed at black women was one of the means they employed to remind us that the women's movement was "theirs"-that we were able to participate because they allowed it, even encouraged it; after all, we were needed to legitimate the process. They did not see us as equals. And though they expected us to provide first hand accounts of black experience, they felt it was their role to decide if these experiences were authentic. Frequently, college-educated black women (even those from poor and working class backgrounds) were dismissed as mere imitators. Our presence in movement activities did not count, as white women were convinced that "real" blackness meant speaking the patois of poor black people, being uneducated, streetwise, and a variety of other stereotypes. If we dared to criticize the movement or to assume responsibility for reshaping feminist ideas and introducing new ideas, our voices were tuned out, dismissed, silenced. We could be heard only if our statements echoed the sentiments of the dominant discourse.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: (1984), Chapter 1: Black Women: Shaping Feminist Theory, pp. 11-12.

John Osborne photo
Roy Jenkins photo
Daniel McCallum photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell photo
Cornstalk photo
Edmund White photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Simplicity http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21390/Simplicity
From the poems written in English

Bill O'Reilly photo
Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert photo
Laurence Sterne photo
George Mason photo
Paul Blobel photo

“Every spy and saboteur knew what he had to expect when he was arrested.”

Paul Blobel (1894–1951) German SS officer and Holocaust perpetrator

Quoted in "The Eichmann Kommandos" - Page 154 - by Michael Angelo Musmanno - 1961.

Paul A. Samuelson photo
Gerald Ford photo

“All my children have spoken for themselves since they first learned to speak, and not always with my advance approval, and I expect that to continue in the future.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

As quoted in The New York Post (13 August 1974)
1970s

Dashiell Hammett photo

“Spade pulled his hand out of hers. He no longer either smiled or grimaced. His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. Then it happens we were in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. It's bad all around – bad for that one organization, bad for every detective everywhere. Third, I'm a detective and expecting me to run criminals down and then let them go free is like asking a dog to catch a rabbit and let it go. It can be done, all right, and sometimes it is done, but it's not the natural thing. The only way I could have let you go was by letting Gutman and Cairo and the kid go. … Fourth, no matter what I wanted to do now it would be absolutely impossible for me to let you go without having myself dragged to the gallows with the others. Next, I've no reason in God's world to think I can trust you and if I did this and got away with it you'd have something on me that you could use whenever you happened to want to. That's five of them. The sixth would be that, since I've got something on you, I couldn't be sure you wouldn't decide to shoot a hole in *me* some day. Seventh, I don't even like the idea of thinking that there might be one chance in a hundred that you'd played me for a sucker. And eighth – but that's enough. All those on one side. Maybe some of them are unimportant. I won't argue about that. But look at the number of them. Now on the other side we've got what? All we've got is the fact that maybe you love me and maybe I love you." … "But suppose I do? What of it? Maybe next month I won't. I've been through it before – when it lasted that long. Then what? Then I'll think I played the sap. And if I did it and got sent over then I'd be sure I was the sap. Well, if I send you over I'll be sorry as hell – I'll have some rotten nights – but that'll pass. Listen." He took her by the shoulders and bent her back, leaning over her. "If that doesn't mean anything to you forget it and we'll make it this: I won't because all of me wants to – wants to say to hell with the consequences and do it -- and because – God damn you – you've counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with the others. … Don't be too sure I'm as crooked as I'm supposed to be. That kind of reputation might be good business – bringing in high-priced jobs and making it easier to deal with the enemy. … Well, a lot of money would have been at least one more item on the other side of the scales."”

… Spade set the edges of his teeth together and said through them: "I won't play the sap for you."
Chap. 20, "If They Hang You"
spoken by the character "Sam Spade" to "Brigid O'Shaughnessy."
The Maltese Falcon (1930)

George William Curtis photo
Nathanael Greene photo

“But whatever grounds I supposed there were for authorizing such expectations, I now find they were vain and nugatory. The cloud thickens, and the prospects are daily growing darker. There is now no hope of cash. The agents are loaded with heavy debts, and perplexed with half-finished contracts, and the people clamorous for their pay, refusing to proceed in the public business unless their present demands are discharged. The constant run of expenses, incident to the department, presses hard for further credit., or immediate supplies of money. To extend one, is impossible; to obtain the other, we have not the least prospect. I see nothing, therefore, but a general check, if not an absolute stop, to the progress of every branch of business in the whole department, I have little reason to hope that, with the most favorable disposition in the agents, it will be in our power to provide for the occasional demands of the army in their present cantonments; much less, to have in readiness the necessary apparatus, and supplies of different kinds, for putting the army in motion at the opening of the campaign. My apprehensions of a failure in these respects are so strong, and my anxiety for the consequences so great, that I feel it my duty once more to represent to your Excellency our circumstances and prospects. From such a view of our situation, you may be led not to expect more from us than we are able to perform, and may have time to take your measures consequent upon such information.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (January 1780)

P. L. Travers photo
Pauline Kael photo

“For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like "American Beauty." We've become a heavy-handed society.”

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) American film critic

"The Perils of Being Pauline," interview with Francis Davis, The New Yorker (October 2001).
Interviews

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Erik Naggum photo

“If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Usenet signatures

Daniel Johns photo
Mukesh Ambani photo
Heather Brooke photo
Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Jesse Ventura photo
Emma Thompson photo

“Four a. m., having just returned from an evening at the Golden Spheres, which despite the inconveniences of heat, noise and overcrowding was not without its pleasures. Thankfully, there were no dogs and no children. The gowns were middling. There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate, however, people were very free with their compliments and I made several new acquaintances. There was Lindsay Doran of Mirage, wherever that might be, who is largely responsible for my presence here, an enchanting companion about whom too much good cannot be said. Mr. Ang Lee, of foreign extraction, who most unexpectedly appeared to understand me better than I understand myself. Mr. James Shamis, a most copiously erudite person and Miss Kate Winslet, beautiful in both countenance and spirit. Mr. Pat Doyle, a composer and a Scot, who displayed the kind of wild behaviour one has learned to expect from that race. Mr. Mark Kenton, an energetic person with a ready smile who, as I understand it, owes me a great deal of money. [Breaks character, smiles. ] TRUE!! [Back in character. ] Miss Lisa Henson of Columbia, a lovely girl and Mr. Garrett Wiggin, a lovely boy. I attempted to converse with Mr. Sydney Pollack, but his charms and wisdom are so generally pleasing, that it proved impossible to get within ten feet of him. The room was full of interesting activity until 11 p. m. when it emptied rather suddenly. The lateness of the hour is due, therefore, not to the dance, but to the waiting in a long line for a horseless carriage of unconscionable size. The modern world has clearly done nothing for transport.”

Emma Thompson (1959) British actress and writer

Golden Globe Award Speech

John N. Bahcall photo

“We often frame our understanding of what the space telescope will do in terms of what we expect to find, and actually it would be terribly anticlimactic if in fact we find what we expect to find. … The most important discoveries will provide answers to questions that we do not yet know how to ask and will concern objects we have not yet imagined.”

John N. Bahcall (1934–2005) American physicist

John N. Bahcall, quoted in his obituary at CalTech (7 September 2005) http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/features/articles/20050907.shtml; On the Hubble Space Telescope's capabilities for the advancement of science

William Westmoreland photo
Sergei Akhromeyev photo

“If it is necessary we will find a quick answer and it will not be the way the United States expects it. It will be an answer that devalues the 'Star Wars' program.”

Sergei Akhromeyev (1923–1991) Soviet marshal

1986 UPI (Moscow) press release on Soviet reaction to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Quoted in Ellensburg Daily Record, 27 Aug 1986, and elsewhere.

William Herschel photo

“The changes that are thus proved to have already happened, prepare us for those that may be expected hereafter to take place, by the gradual condensation of the nebulous matter”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)
Context: I compared also the present appearance of this nebula with the delineation which Huyghens has given of it in his Systema Saturnium... The changes that are thus proved to have already happened, prepare us for those that may be expected hereafter to take place, by the gradual condensation of the nebulous matter; for had we no where an instance of any alteration in the appearance of nebula, they might be looked upon as permanent celestial bodies, and the successive changes, to which by the action of an attracting principle they have been conceived to be subject, might be rejected as being unsupported by observation.<!-- p. 324

William Saroyan photo
William Luther Pierce photo

“You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts
1990s, 1990

Quentin Crisp photo
Hans Haacke photo
Jimmy Carter photo

“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U. S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell, to an avid contributor.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Statement on the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court, in an interview with Thom Hartmann (28 July 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDsPWmioSHg; also quoted in Jimmy Carter: U.S. Is an 'Oligarchy With Unlimited Political Bribery'" in Rolling Stone (31 July 2015) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/videos/jimmy-carter-u-s-is-an-oligarchy-with-unlimited-political-bribery-20150731, and in "Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy" by Eric Zuesse, in Huffington Post (3 August 2015) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/jimmy-carter-is-correct-t_b_7922788.html.
Post-Presidency

Lester B. Pearson photo

“When I came back to Ottawa I found myself faced with a very difficult parliamentary situation… I think it is fair to say that Mr St Laurent, on the basis of private discussions with the Opposition leaders, did not expect any serious division in the House of Commons over our policies on Suez. However, bitter division there was, and we were condemned strongly for deserting our two mother countries. The Conservative attack was led by Howard Green (who in June 1959 was to become Secretary of State for External Affairs). Green accused us of being the "chore boy" of the United States, of being a better friend to Nasser than to Britain and France, and claimed that our government "by its actions in the Suez crisis, has made this month of November 1956, the most disgraceful period for Canada in the history of this nation," and that it was "high time Canada had a government which will not knife Canada's best friends in the back." Any feeling of exaltation and conceit or euphoria at our success in avoiding a general war in the Middle East (if in fact we had avoided it by our actions) was dissipated for me by the vigour of the assaults on my conduct, my wisdom, my rectitude, my integrity, and my everything else by an embattled Conservative Opposition. It was a very vigorous debate reflected in the general election of the next year. But I have always believed, and I think the great weight of Canadian opinion strongly approved what we had done. Further, I am absolutely certain and will remain certain in my own mind that the New Commonwealth would have soon shattered over the issue had the British not backed down.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume Two

Jason Biggs photo

“I expect everything I'm in to be massive, but it just doesn't happen that way.”

Jason Biggs (1978) American actor

On success of the show Orange Is the New Black, interviewed in: — December 4, 2014, Jason Biggs: I always win, The Belfast Telegraph, Heat magazine, June 15, 2014 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/jason-biggs-i-always-win-30355396.html,

Heidi Klum photo
Karen Horney photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Men are still playing protector of women’s transitions, and both sexes expect only men to make transitions on their own.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Julia Gillard photo

“There is nothing that should lead you to expect bastardry of that magnitude. Hard things happen; a hard thing happened to Malcolm Turnbull, a hard thing happened to Bob Hawke, a hard thing happened Kim Beazley, a hard thing happened to Kevin Rudd, a hard thing happened to me. You can still make choices on how you conduct yourself.”

Julia Gillard (1961) Australian politician and lawyer, 27th Prime Minister of Australia

Referring to leaks against Gillard allegedly made by Rudd during the 2010 election campaign.
The Killing Season, Episode three: The Long Shadow (2010–13)

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Margaret Cho photo

“Although it might be that we can't expect change overnight, there was really a rapid shift in the way we view politics.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

John Hicks photo
Seymour Papert photo
Ben Croshaw photo
W. Edwards Deming photo

“I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don't know what to copy!”

W. Edwards Deming (1900–1993) American professor, author, and consultant

If Japan Can...Why Can't We? (1980)

“As Mahoba was for some time the headquarters of the early Muhammadan Governors, we could hardly expect to find that any Hindu buildings had escaped their furious bigotry, or their equally destructive cupidity. When the destruction of a Hindu temple furnished the destroyer with the ready means of building a house for himself on earth, as well as in heaven, it is perhaps wonderful that so many temples should still be standing in different parts of the country. It must be admitted, however, that, in none of the cities which the early Muhammadans occupied permanently, have they left a single temple standing, save this solitary temple at Mahoba, which doubtless owed its preservation solely to its secure position amid the deep waters of the Madan-Sagar. In Delhi, and Mathura, in Banaras and Jonpur, in Narwar and Ajmer, every single temple was destroyed by their bigotry, but thanks to their cupidity, most of the beautiful Hindu pillars were preserved, and many of them, perhaps, on their original positions, to form new colonnades for the masjids and tombs of the conquerors. In Mahoba all the other temples were utterly destroyed and the only Hindu building now standing is part of the palace of Parmal, or Paramarddi Deva, on the hill-fort, which has been converted into a masjid. In 1843, I found an inscription of Paramarddi Deva built upside down in the wall of the fort just outside this masjid. It is dated in S. 1240, or A. D. 1183, only one year before the capture of Mahoba by Prithvi-Raj Chohan of Delhi. In the Dargah of Pir Mubarak Shah, and the adjacent Musalman burial-ground, I counted 310 Hindu pillars of granite. I found a black stone bull lying beside the road, and the argha of a lingam fixed as a water-spout in the terrace of the Dargah. These last must have belonged to a temple of Siva, which was probably built in the reign of Kirtti Varmma, between 1065 and 1085 A. D., as I discovered an inscription of that prince built into the wall of one of the tombs.”

Archaeological Survey of India, Volume I: Four Reports Made During the Years 1862-63-64-65, Varanasi Reprint, 1972, Pp. 440-41. Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1993). Hindu temples: What happened to them. Volume I.

Bret Easton Ellis photo
Oswald Chambers photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo
Daniel Kahneman photo
Franco Modigliani photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
George Boole photo