Quotes About Expectations

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure.

Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.

What you say about this world I do not quite agree with I think it a very good world, and only requires a person to be reasonable in his expectations, and not to trust too much to others.

For a stand-up comic, a minute on TV without a laugh was death. And Carson was adamant about the formula. He had recently stopped by the Improv to see Jay Leno and Andy Kaufman perform and had pronounced both of them "not ready," telling Budd Friedman, "They're funny, but they don't have six minutes." By

The town's young parents especially prized this idea of Newton as a child's paradise. Many of them had left the hip, sophisticated city to move here. They had accepted massive expenses, stultifying monotony, and the queasy disappointment of settling for a conventional life. To

Our villains always disappoint us. They never look the part.

Let us be practical in our expectations of the Criminal Law.… [For] we have merely to imagine, by some trick of time travel, meeting our earliest hominid ancestor, Adam, a proto-man, short of stature, luxuriantly furred, newly bipedal, foraging about on the African savannah three million or so years ago. Now, let us agree that we may pronounce whatever laws we like for this clever little creature, still it would be unwise to pet him.

You don't want to hear what I have to say. You only want me to say what you want to hear. But trust me when I tell you that you won't ever get all you want. You'll just grow frustrated and bitter, and you'll end up doing things that will kill the best part of you.

there is nothing so brittle as someone else's perfection.

When your ambition is so wrought that you're never satisfied, it takes a load of pressure off. Every spot on the ladder is equally disappointing because it is not the rung above. Which means I've perfectly filled my potential; I've reached as high as I'll ever get, the point of not good enough.

You get into a habit of low expectations, which gives you a sort of contentment. You go through life as if through a mist, seeing little farther than your nose and scorning all that only appears wispy and faint. Then a bolt of lightning splits the mist and gives you a glimpse of all you might be missing.

The promises of yesterday are the taxes of today.

This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.

We can only describe actual performance goals that are realistic

Aye. He was very nice there. The rest of my life'll be an anti-climax.

Your mother and sister weren't on the radio telling us all to be brave. Look, I don't expect composers and poets to be heroes. I just don't like hypocrites.

You would think that a rock star being married to a super-model would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.

What are your goals for the call?" "If things go right, what are some stretch goals?" "What is the worst thing that might happen in the call, and what are ways to avoid it?" "What value will the customer will get from this call?" 

People tend to want to live up to their friends' high regard.

If you have realistically low expectations, you'll end up pleased in most circumstances.

So if you are a perfectionist, you are guaranteed to be a loser in whatever you do.

And in all cases I have been pleasantly shocked to discover that by lowering my standards not only do I feel better about what I do but I tend to do it more effectively.

No matter how much he accomplished he would always raise his standards slightly higher, and then he'd feel miserable.

You too may be paying heavily for your perfectionism.