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

 

Stephen Hawking

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Being born in New York City, tends to lead to big expectations, expectations that I only started to realize after I had left.

 

Joseph Pisani

 

The first discipline modernity’s originators imposed upon themselves was that of self-restraint, learning to live with vulgarity. Their high expectations for effectiveness were made possible by low expectations of what was to be.

 

Allan Bloom

 

I cried. I was so happy. I can't wait to see him and give him a big hug. It was so exciting. It was like a weight lifted off our shoulders. He had all those expectations. It's amazing. I'm shocked. He's very confident. We knew it would happen, but there was all those expectations from everybody.

 

Manny Ramirez

 

Some years ago I was at a committee meeting where one of the group suddenly launched upon one of the other members an astounding onslaught of abuse, vilification, and loathing from which only failing breath and imminent seizure caused him to desist. It was in fact my first experience of academic debate. The chairman, visibly shaken by the vehemence of this tirade, offered the right of reply to the person attacked, who then spoke as follows: "Mr Chairman, I did not say what I said with the specific and deliberate intention of reducing my colleague to spluttering apoplexy; that this has in fact happened I can only regard as a bonus."
From that meeting I took away an important recognition — the lurking Bonus Factor In Otherwise Unpromising Situations.

 

Brian Matthews

 

The most important point is — and remains — not to take oneself seriously. There is no past, and, certainly, no future. There are but a few years — ten at the most. You pass your days as best you can, doing as little harm as possible. Let the desires be few and treat expectations as weeds. You read, scribble as the spirit moves you, hear some new music, see every week the few people you are attached to. Again: guard yourself, above all, against self-dramatization, a feeling of importance, and the sprouting of expectations.

 

Eric Hoffer