“
As your lover describes you, so you are.
”
”
Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)
“
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
Lose the pessimism, Ms. Lane. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
“
Dare to believe in the reality of your assumption
and watch the world play its part
relative to to its fulfillment.
”
”
Neville Goddard
“
The visions we offer our children shape the future. It _matters_ what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.
”
”
Carl Sagan (Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space)
“
Because ‘boys will be boys’ is a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Lundy. “They’re too loud, on the whole, to be easily misplaced or overlooked; when they disappear from the home, parents send search parties to dredge them out of swamps and drag them away from frog ponds. It’s not innate. It’s learned. But it protects them from the doors, keeps them safe at home. Call it irony, if you like, but we spend so much time waiting for our boys to stray that they never have the opportunity. We notice the silence of men. We depend upon the silence of women.
”
”
Seanan McGuire (Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children, #1))
“
Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act.
”
”
Howard Zinn (You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times)
“
Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '.
Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice.
I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about.
”
”
Stephen Fry
“
Every single human being should be the fulfilment of a prophecy: for every human being should be the realisation of some ideal, either in the mind of God or in the mind of man.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (De Profundis)
“
[When a religious couple wrote to Sagan about fulfilled prophecies, he wrote back in May 1996:]
If ‘fulfilled prophecy’ is your criterion, why do you not believe in materialistic science, which has an unparalleled record of fulfilled prophecy? Consider, for example, eclipses.
”
”
Carl Sagan
“
Isaac is touch, and he is sound. He is smell and he is sight. I tried to make him a single sense like I did with everyone else, but he is all of them. He overpowers my senses and that is exactly why I ran from him. I was afraid of feeling brightly—afraid I would become used to the color and sounds and smells, and they would be taken from me. I was a self-fulfilling prophecy; destroying before I could be destroyed. I wrote about women like that, I didn’t realize I was one.
”
”
Tarryn Fisher (Mud Vein)
“
It’s said that the biggest determinant of our lives is whether we see the world as welcoming or hostile. Each becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Gloria Steinem (My Life on the Road)
“
Low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we aim high, we’ll get better results.
”
”
Ted Chiang (The Lifecycle of Software Objects)
“
It's not good to have fears like this. It only makes it more likely that you'll die that way—a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Suzanne Young (The Program (The Program, #1))
“
The greatest damage done by neglect, trauma or emotional loss is not the immediate pain they inflict but the long-term distortions they induce in the way a developing child will continue to interpret the world and her situation in it. All too often these ill-conditioned implicit beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies in our lives. We create meanings from our unconscious interpretation of early events, and then we forge our present experiences from the meaning we’ve created. Unwittingly, we write the story of our future from narratives based on the past...Mindful awareness can bring into consciousness those hidden, past-based perspectives so that they no longer frame our worldview.’Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present…Until you reach that point, you are unconscious.’ …In present awareness we are liberated from the past.
”
”
Gabor Maté (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction)
“
...you can't let something that'll probably never happen ruin your life. You're only helping to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy
”
”
Raymond Khoury (The Last Templar (Templar, #1))
“
Don’t ask me why I obsessively look to rock ’n’ roll bands for some kind of model for a better society. I guess it’s just that I glimpsed something beautiful in a flashbulb moment once, and perhaps mistaking it for prophecy have been seeking its fulfillment ever since.
”
”
Lester Bangs
“
Pessimistic prophecies are self-fulfilling.
”
”
Martin E.P. Seligman (Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life)
“
To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ.
”
”
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
“
The Lord Steward summoned Lord James to his study. Joining
them were Lord Nimrod, the Consort, and Judith, who stood beside
the Consort and stared out the window. A winter sunrise streaked the
sky with pink-and-gold light. Judith wrestled with her anguish. This is
probably Helen’s last sunrise, and she’s no doubt in some stinking hole and
cannot even see it.
Lord James paid little heed to anyone else. All he saw was Miriam’s
face, her green eyes harsh with accusation. All he heard were her pleas.
Do something, James. Save her. Don’t let her die.
Thinking he had everyone’s attention, Shinar got to the point. “It
seems you have a daughter, James.
”
”
Candace L. Talmadge (Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal)
“
Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching.
”
”
Dorothy Parker (The Portable Dorothy Parker)
“
This idea that children won't learn without outside rewards and penalties, or in the debased jargon of the behaviorists, "positive and negative reinforcements," usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we treat children long enough as if that were true, they will come to believe it is true. So many people have said to me, "If we didn't make children do things, they wouldn't do anything." Even worse, they say, "If I weren't made to do things, I wouldn't do anything."
It is the creed of a slave.
”
”
John C. Holt (How Children Fail (Classics in Child Development))
“
Believe in yourself. Under-confidence leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that you are not good enough for your work.
”
”
Roopleen
“
There’s a vast amount of research on what happens when we believe a student is especially talented. We begin to lavish extra attention on them and hold them to higher expectations. We expect them to excel, and that expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
“
Self-doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton
“
One day Dostoevsky threw out the enigmatic remark: "Beauty will save the world". What sort of a statement is that? For a long time I considered it mere words. How could that be possible? When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything? Ennobled, uplifted, yes - but whom has it saved?
There is, however, a certain peculiarity in the essence of beauty, a peculiarity in the status of art: namely, the convincingness of a true work of art is completely irrefutable and it forces even an opposing heart to surrender. It is possible to compose an outwardly smooth and elegant political speech, a headstrong article, a social program, or a philosophical system on the basis of both a mistake and a lie. What is hidden, what distorted, will not immediately become obvious.
Then a contradictory speech, article, program, a differently constructed philosophy rallies in opposition - and all just as elegant and smooth, and once again it works. Which is why such things are both trusted and mistrusted.
In vain to reiterate what does not reach the heart.
But a work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.
So perhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through - then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar to that very same place, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?
In that case Dostoevsky's remark, "Beauty will save the world", was not a careless phrase but a prophecy? After all he was granted to see much, a man of fantastic illumination.
And in that case art, literature might really be able to help the world today?
”
”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Lecture (Bilingual Edition) (English and Russian Edition))
“
Prophecy is history unfulfilled, and history is prophecy fulfilled.
”
”
Dwight L. Moody (Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study and Anecdotes, Incidents and Illustrations)
“
The trial awaiting Helen was known among the Toltecs as a Kazil,
a special court convened to consider only those state crimes serious
enough to be punished by death. It consisted of a joint session of
the Kinshazen and the highest-ranking priests of the Temple of Kronos,
who were referred to as the Host of the Faithful.
A Kazil was always conducted at Kindred House, the building where
the members of the Kinshazen met. Its outer layer consisted of massive
blocks of polished pink granite, which had a decidedly dark cast to it.
Kindred House was closest to Lake Shambhala of all the structures in
the Nighthall government complex.
Those summoned before a Kazil and convicted of the charges were invariably put to death within three days of the proceeding. And in only a few, very rare, instances had anyone been found innocent on trial before a Kazil.
”
”
Candace L. Talmadge (Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal)
“
Will you be at the harvest,
Among the gatherers of new fruits?
Then you must begin today to remake
Your mental and spiritual world,
And join the warriors and celebrants
Of freedom, realizers of great dreams.
You can’t remake the world
Without remaking yourself.
Each new era begins within.
It is an inward event,
With unsuspected possibilities
For inner liberation.
We could use it to turn on
Our inward lights.
We could use it to use even the dark
And negative things positively.
We could use the new era
To clean our eyes,
To see the world differently,
To see ourselves more clearly.
Only free people can make a free world.
Infect the world with your light.
Help fulfill the golden prophecies.
Press forward the human genius.
Our future is greater than our past.
”
”
Ben Okri
“
We were not in thrall to destiny or fate, but merely the weight of our own choices. When we turned toward each other like flowers facing the sun, we were not fulfilling some prophecy or old story. We were writing our own.
”
”
Luna McNamara (Psyche and Eros)
“
Fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thinking that there is something to be avoided manifests something to avoid.
”
”
Vironika Tugaleva (The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness)
“
Lose the pessimism, Ms. Lane,” Barrons said when I informed him of my thoughts. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
“
We’re all looking for more fulfillment in our lives, and we won’t put up with anything that seems to bring us down.
”
”
James Redfield (The Celestine Prophecy: how to refresh your approach to tomorrow with a new understanding, energy and optimism)
“
Oversharing? Not vulnerability; I call it floodlighting. ... A lot of times we share too much information as a way to protect us from vulnerability, and here's why.
I'm scared to let you know that I just wrote this article and I'm under total fire for it and people are making fun of me and I'm feeling hurt -- the same thing that I told someone in an intimate conversation. So what I do is I floodlight you with it - I don't know you very well or I'm in front of a big group, or it's a story that I haven't processed enough to be sharing with other people - and you immediately respond "hands up; push me away" and I go, "See? No one cares about me. No one gives a s*** that I'm hurting. I knew it."
It's how we protect ourselves from vulnerability. We just engage in a behavior that confirms our fear.
”
”
Brené Brown (The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connections and Courage)
“
Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future?
One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now"likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
A promise fulfilled may be a classic moment, but prophecies mean anticlimax. How much more awesome was an unexpected salvation?
”
”
China Miéville (Embassytown)
“
This is how self-fulfilling prophecies work: we have an expectation about who someone is and how she’s likely to behave, then we treat her in a way that is likely to elicit those behaviors, thus confirming our initial expectations… and so on.
”
”
Amy Cuddy (Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges)
“
Continuing to play the victim is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Blaming others for your station in life will indeed make you a victim but the perpetrator will be your own self, not life or those around you.
”
”
Bobby Darnell (Time For Dervin - Living Large In Geiggityville)
“
It's not good to have fears like this. It only makes it more likely you'll die that way---a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Suzanne Young (The Program (The Program, #1))
“
Our personal identities are socially situated. We are where we live, eat, work, and make love. [...]
Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. The expectations of others often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Without realizing it, we often behave in ways that confirm the beliefs others have about us. Those subjective beliefs create new realities for us. We often become who other people think we are, in their eyes and in our behavior.
”
”
Philip G. Zimbardo (The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil)
“
Sadly, in many cases, the assumption that children are incompetent, irresponsible, and in need of constant direction and supervision becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The children themselves become convinced of their incompetence and irresponsibility, and may act accordingly. The surest way to foster any trait in a person is to treat that person as if he or she already has it.
”
”
Peter O. Gray (Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life)
“
Tess trembled so hard her teeth chattered. “So it is with the body,” said the nun, eyes narrowing fiercely. “The hated innocent becomes hateful. Goodness withers when it is continuously ground underfoot. We fulfill our parents’ direst prophecies, then curl around our own pain until we can’t see beyond ourselves.
”
”
Rachel Hartman (Tess of the Road (Tess of the Road, #1))
“
… the major enemy of black survival in America has been and is neither oppression nor exploitation but rather the nihilistic threat—that is, loss of hope and absence of meaning. For as long as hope remains and meaning is preserved, the possibility of overcoming oppression stays alive. The self-fulfilling prophecy of the nihilistic threat is that without hope there can be no future, that without meaning there can be no struggle.
”
”
Cornel West (Race Matters)
“
Here's how to fulfill a prophecy: you are a woman, you speak the truth, and the world makes you into a liar.
”
”
Elizabeth May (Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft)
“
She was proud of her power of prophecy, though she had not yet lived to see any of her prophecies fulfilled.
”
”
Graham Greene (Orient Express)
“
The urge to want some bit of information to be true often clouds our ability to assess why that information may be false.
”
”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
“
A general word of advice: It’s always more effective to assume the best in conflict situations. In fact, expecting the worst—which is typical of people with insecure attachment styles—often acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume your partner will act hurtfully or reject you, you automatically respond defensively—thus starting a vicious cycle of negativity.
”
”
Amir Levine (Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find—and Keep—Love)
“
There are others. There will be others. Other heroes, other heroines. Other prophecies to fulfill, other adversaries to despise. There will be stories told and forgotten, and reinvented anew until one day, perhaps, the oldest are remembered, and the beginning may end, and the ending begin.
”
”
Jacqueline Carey (Banewreaker (The Sundering, #1))
“
When I read the ghastly lines of tragedy darkly penned into my life, I turn and notice that the pen in my hand is wet.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
Polls could be self-fulfilling prophecies, shaping reality as much as they described it.
”
”
Rick Perlstein (Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America)
“
it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy—white settlers deny Black communities the necessities of life, then blame us for the social dysfunction that follows.
”
”
Desmond Cole (The Skin We're In: A Year of Black Resistance and Power)
“
Choose your beliefs wisely, for they will become your reality.
”
”
Anthon St. Maarten
“
I don’t really believe any of this, but still I know it. And in knowing it, there is the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Tanya Thompson (Red Russia)
“
My wishes before I die, to fulfill my mission on earth; The writing of my life stories to inspired present and future generations.
”
”
Lailah Gifty Akita
“
There was a brittleness in her tone, and Baphen was uncomfortably reminded that some prophecies are fulfilled by the very actions meant to prevent them.
”
”
Holly Black (The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air, #3))
“
In good times, pessimism is a luxury; but in bad times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling and fatal prophecy.
”
”
David Brin (Existence)
“
We also all know people who could do so much more if only they believed in themselves. Like so many things, a lack of confidence can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I don’t know how to convince anyone to believe deep down that she is the best person for the job, not even myself.
”
”
Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
“
Who had the biggest army in the ancient world? Caesar Augustus in Rome, and that is precisely how he was able to dominate that world. Nevertheless, his army is nothing compared to this angelic stratias that has lined up behind the new emperor. Remember Isaiah's prophesy that Yahweh would one day bare his mighty arm before all the nations. N.T. Wright has magnificently observed that the prophecy finds its fulfillment in the tiny arm of the baby Jesus coming out of his manger-crib.
”
”
Robert Barron
“
NOCEBO: Latin for "I will harm"; a negative placebo; physical manifestation of pessimism; self-fulfilling prophecy of disbelief. In the nocebo effect, a bad result occurs without any physiological bias. In one study, women who believed they were more prone to heart disease were four times more likely to die of it than women with the same risk factors but without a pessimistic outlook.
”
”
Jon Winokur (Encyclopedia Neurotica)
“
Teachers’ beliefs created self-fulfilling prophecies. When teachers believed their students were bloomers, they set high expectations for their success. As a result, the teachers engaged in more supportive behaviors that boosted the students’ confidence and enhanced their learning and development
”
”
Adam M. Grant (Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success)
“
God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men's curiosity by enabling them to fore know things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreters, be thereby manifested to the world.
”
”
Isaac Newton
“
Gromph closed his eyes and let the logic settle. Jarlaxle was right, of course. Menzoberranzan was a place so wound up in its own intrigue that truth mattered less than suspicion, that suspicion often became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and thus, often created truth. (This applies to all of the world, I believe)
”
”
R.A. Salvatore
“
Angry voters are more willing to support candidates who vilify their opponents and find easy scapegoats. Talking heads have become shouting heads. Many Americans have grown cynical about our collective ability to solve our problems. And that cynicism has become a self-fulfilling prophecy, as nothing gets solved.
”
”
Robert B. Reich (Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it)
“
The vicious cycle starts: if you fail at something, you think it is your fault. Therefore you think you can’t do that task. As a result, next time you have to do the task, you believe you can’t, so you don’t even try. The result is that you can’t, just as you thought. You’re trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
”
”
Don Norman (The Design of Everyday Things)
“
The adventure is not in getting somewhere, it's the on-the-way experience. It is not the expected; it's the surprise. Not the fulfilment of prophecy, but the providence of something better than that prophesied.
”
”
Ruskin Bond (Roads to Mussoorie)
“
Are we more likely to suffer from arthritis, stiff joints, poor memory, flagging energy, and decreased sex drive as we age, simply because that’s the version of the truth that ads, commercials, television shows, and media reports bombard us with? What other self-fulfilling prophecies are we creating in our minds without being aware of what we’re doing? And what “inevitable truths” can we successfully reverse simply through thinking new thoughts and choosing new beliefs? The
”
”
Joe Dispenza (You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter)
“
Which one do we want to be queen?” Sunny asked. “We get to pick, right? When we fulfill the prophecy?” “None of them,” Starflight said gloomily. “Blaze is about as smart as a concussed sheep, Blister is most likely plotting to become queen of all the tribes somehow, and if Burn wins, she’ll probably keep the war going just for fun.
”
”
Tui T. Sutherland (The Dragonet Prophecy (Wings of Fire, #1))
“
Will the world end in darkness because it is foretold? Or because there will be those who believe it so strongly they will make it so? In the fear that I always try to hide in my heart, I wonder if there is even a difference.
”
”
Patrick Ness (And the Ocean Was Our Sky)
“
A serious problem with reactive language is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People become reinforced in the paradigm that they are determined, and they produce evidence to support the belief. They feel increasingly victimized and out of control, not in charge of their life or their destiny. They blame outside forces—other people, circumstances, even the stars—for their own situation.
”
”
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
“
The truth is, we often underestimate by as much as 50 percent how much others are willing to help us when asked. As we talked about in chapter 2, being mistrustful or assuming others are selfish can be self-fulfilling prophecies.
”
”
Eric Barker (Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong)
“
Lonely people tend to scoop out larger spaces of isolation to burrow into by cutting themselves off from others - triggering the self-fulfilling prophecy of preventing rejection by avoiding opportunities for connection. Bonds are weakened, contact is reduced, loneliness fissures outward.
”
”
Kristen Radtke (Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness)
“
We Are Lovable
Even if the most important person in your world rejects you, you are still real, and you are still okay. —Codependent No More
Do you ever find yourself thinking: How could anyone possibly love me? For many of us, this is a deeply ingrained belief that can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thinking we are unlovable can sabotage our relationships with co-workers, friends, family members, and other loved ones. This belief can cause us to choose, or stay in, relationships that are less than we deserve because we don’t believe we deserve better. We may become desperate and cling as if a particular person was our last chance at love. We may become defensive and push people away. We may withdraw or constantly overreact. While growing up, many of us did not receive the unconditional love we deserved. Many of us were abandoned or neglected by important people in our life. We may have concluded that the reason we weren’t loved was because we were unlovable. Blaming ourselves is an understandable reaction, but an inappropriate one. If others couldn’t love us, or love us in ways that worked, that’s not our fault. In recovery, we’re learning to separate ourselves from the behavior of others. And we’re learning to take responsibility for our healing, regardless of the people around us. Just as we may have believed that we’re unlovable, we can become skilled at practicing the belief that we are lovable. This new belief will improve the quality of our relationships. It will improve our most important relationship: our relationship with our self. We will be able to let others love us and become open to the love and friendship we deserve. Today, help me be aware of and release any self-defeating beliefs I have about being unlovable. Help me begin, today, to tell myself that I am lovable. Help me practice this belief until it gets into my core and manifests itself in my relationships.
”
”
Melody Beattie
“
To break the curses and fulfill the prophecy, the original offense had to be repeated again. You had to make Oro fall in love with you. But we were already in love. You would have refused. So, I had to take the memories of us together away.” Isla could barely breathe.
”
”
Alex Aster (Lightlark (Lightlark, #1))
“
When the rush of the weak sweeps over those that strive to be strong, its destruction. The commonplaces of moral judgment become fogged with the lack of perception stained with the sting of longing. The voice of reason is lost in the envious echoes of hearts torn by battle. The song of our children echo the misfortune of their parent's haze---we all started out small and had dreams to become something more than what we were.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Most of us don't fear that we are not enough; what most of us really fear is our own greatness. Most of us have a fear of success. Why? Because we don't think that we deserve to be successful in anything. This is why people recklessly spend their money or don't work as hard as they could or do things that they know are wrong. They are hindering their own success on purpose, because they don't think they deserve it. They cut their own legs out from underneath them on purpose. They are self-sabotaging.
”
”
Lisa Bedrick (How to Walk Worthy of Your Calling)
“
This is my song for Gabriel,
The Angel of the Word,
I've sung to you so many times,
This time I may be heard.
I sing to you from fellowship,
Past times I sang alone,
But now I can extend my love
To wood and air and stone.
Your golden wings have cradled me,
Your voice has made me kneel,
Your actions turn the universe,
Your wisdom spins the wheel.
This is my song for Abraham,
The shepherd of mankind,
You led your tribe out from Canaan,
And none were left behind.
O, come, fulfil your prophecies,
And say the war is won,
Must I wait in vales of visions,
And leave my song undone?
”
”
Philip Dodd (Angel War)
“
… fretting about forgetting can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, let’s all take a collective deep breath. The next time you struggle with the name of that famous surfer or forget to buy milk at the store, you can remember that these are examples of normal forgetting and, hopefully, you can relax. Forgetting happens. If you stress about it, it will happen even more.
”
”
Lisa Genova (Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting)
“
You know who traditionally does poorly on standardized tests? Women and marginalized individuals. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: groups that are constantly told by society that they’re less smart walk into a testing situation anxious as hell and end up underperforming. It’s called Stereotype Threat,
”
”
Ali Hazelwood (Love on the Brain)
“
Some have speculated that the way [Albert] Camus died made his theories on absurdity a self-fulfilling prophecy. Others would say it was the triumphant meaningful way he lived that allowed him to rise heroically above absurdity.
”
”
Aberjhani (Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.)
“
I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies and they claim that their writings are divine rather than human in origin.
”
”
Voddie T. Baucham Jr.
“
Now speaking of fulfilled prophecy, God Himself used those many fulfillments to prove His very existence. Eight hundred years before Jesus Christ was born, in Isaiah 46:9-10, God used one of the greatest prophets of the Old Testament to rebuke His chosen nation for worshiping idols. And then, speaking for God, the prophet Isaiah said, ‘I am God, declaring the end from the beginning…I have spoken it: I will also bring it to pass.
”
”
Tim LaHaye (Edge of Apocalypse (The End, #1))
“
Reluctance to go for the jugular and willingness to accept defeat can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are reluctant to fight, you are inevitably headed toward defeat when the other side is relentless and despises you. It is only for those who persist in the battle and never let up that the possibility of changing the result comes into view. In
”
”
David Horowitz (Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America)
“
When you fear you will confirm a negative stereotype, it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy not because the stereotype is true, but because you can't stop worrying that you could become an example proving it.
This self-fulfilling prophecy, being only a matter of perception, can be easily sublimated. Another study by Steele measured the math abilities of men versus women. When the questions were easy, the women and men performed the same. When they were difficult, the women's scores plummeted lower than did those of their male peers. When they ran the tests again with new participants, but this time before handing out the problems told the subjects that men and women tended to perform equally on the exam, the scores leveled out. The women performed just as well as did the men. The power of the stereotype--women are bad at math--was nullified.
”
”
David McRaney (You Are Not So Smart)
“
Then Lyra gave a cry so passionate that even in that muffled, mist-hung world it raised an echo, but of course it wasn’t an echo, it was the other part of her crying in turn from the land of the living as Lyra moved away into the land of the dead. “My heart, Will …” she groaned, and clung to him, her wet face contorted with pain. And thus the prophecy that the Master of Jordan College had made to the Librarian, that Lyra would make a great betrayal and it would hurt her terribly, was fulfilled.
”
”
Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials)
“
When we don’t think we’re worth much, we find ways to make our world small. We don’t allow ourselves to hope because we’ve already excepted failure. And this pattern of thinking often determines the outcome of our most important choices. But Sam, I have to tell you that doubt and confidence are both acts of faith. They’re both predictions of our capabilities. We either tell ourselves that we can or that we can’t. And these beliefs are a self-fulfilling prophecy, because we validate our doubts by giving up just as much as we are embolden ourselves by refusing to give in. The only way you can break this cycle is to be brave. You have to ignore your doubts and risk failure. You have to try to achieve something that seems unachievable. This is the best recipe for confidence. And confidence is how we get how we start giving ourselves permission to take up more space in the world, to want more for ourselves, and to feel as though we deserve it.
”
”
Craig Silvey (Honeybee)
“
We have these stories we tell ourselves—and other people—about ourselves, based on what happened to us in the past, or what we did, or decisions we made, and then they become our future just by the telling. It’s like a …”
“Self-fulfilling prophecy?” she offers.
“Yeah. We want things to be different but we start by telling the other person how they were the last time, and that kind of, like, limits us to being that person again ... I suppose what I'm saying is that, for once, I’d like to start something clean. Without any stories limiting where this can go, who we can be.
”
”
Catherine Ryan Howard (56 Days)
“
The divine reproach Jesus felt so exquisitely, because of His meekly standing in
for us, fulfilled yet another prophecy: ‘Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full
of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for
comforters, but I found none’ (Ps. 69:20). His heart was broken, as He did ‘suffer
both body and spirit’ (D&C 19:18). He trembled because of pain, and yet He,
amidst profound aloneness, finished His preparations, bringing to pass the
unconditional immortality of all mankind and ‘eternal life for all those who would
keep His commandments (Moses 1:39).
”
”
Neal A. Maxwell
“
Zombies are familiar characters in philosophical thought experiments. They are like people in every way except they have no internal experience....
If there are enough zombies recruited into our world, I worry about the potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if people pretend they are not conscious or do not have free will - or that the cloud of online people is a person; if they pretend there is nothing special about the perspective of the individual - then perhaps we have the power to make it so. We might be able to collectively achieve antimagic.
Humans are free. We can commmit suicide for the benefit of a Singularity. We can engineer our genes to better support an imaginary hive mind. We can make culture and journalism into second-rate activities and spend centuries remixing the detritus of the 1960s and other eras from before individual creativity went out of fashion.
Or we can believe in ourselves. By chance, it might turn out we are real.
”
”
Jaron Lanier (You Are Not a Gadget)
“
Religion always leads to rhetorical despotism," Leto said. "Before the Bene Gesserit, the Jesuits were the best at it."
"Jesuits, Lord?"
"Surely you've met them in your histories?"
"I'm not certain, Lord. When were they?"
"No matter. You learn enough about rhetorical despotism from a study of the Bene Gesserit. Of course, they do not begin by deluding themselves with it."
"It leads to self-fulfilling prophecy and justifications for all manner of obscenities," Leto said.
"This . . . rhetorical despotism, Lord?"
"Yes! It shields evil behind walls of self-righteousness which are proof against all arguments against the evil.
”
”
Frank Herbert (God Emperor of Dune (Dune #4))
“
How could a large land empire thrive and dominate in the modern world without reliable access to world markets and without much recourse to naval power?
Stalin and Hitler had arrived at the same basic answer to this fundamental question. The state must be large in territory and self-sufficient in economics, with a balance between industry and agriculture that supported a hardily conformist and ideologically motivated citizenry capable of fulfilling historical prophecies - either Stalinist internal industrialization or Nazi colonial agrarianism. Both Hitler and Stalin aimed at imperial autarky, within a large land empire well supplies in food, raw materials, and mineral resources. Both understood the flash appeal of modern materials: Stalin had named himself after steel, and Hitler paid special attention to is production. Yet both Stalin and Hitler understood agriculture as a key element in the completion of their revolutions. Both believed that their systems would prove their superiority to decadent capitalism, and guarantee independence from the rest of the world, by the production of food.
p. 158
”
”
Timothy Snyder (Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin)
“
Darwin, with his Origin of Species, his theories about Natural Selection, the Survival of the Fittest, and the influence of environment, shed a flood of light upon the great problems of plant and animal life.
These things had been guessed, prophesied, asserted, hinted by many others, but Darwin, with infinite patience, with perfect care and candor, found the facts, fulfilled the prophecies, and demonstrated the truth of the guesses, hints and assertions. He was, in my judgment, the keenest observer, the best judge of the meaning and value of a fact, the greatest Naturalist the world has produced.
The theological view began to look small and mean.
Spencer gave his theory of evolution and sustained it by countless facts. He stood at a great height, and with the eyes of a philosopher, a profound thinker, surveyed the world. He has influenced the thought of the wisest.
Theology looked more absurd than ever.
Huxley entered the lists for Darwin. No man ever had a sharper sword -- a better shield. He challenged the world. The great theologians and the small scientists -- those who had more courage than sense, accepted the challenge. Their poor bodies were carried away by their friends.
Huxley had intelligence, industry, genius, and the courage to express his thought. He was absolutely loyal to what he thought was truth. Without prejudice and without fear, he followed the footsteps of life from the lowest to the highest forms.
Theology looked smaller still.
Haeckel began at the simplest cell, went from change to change -- from form to form -- followed the line of development, the path of life, until he reached the human race. It was all natural. There had been no interference from without.
I read the works of these great men -- of many others – and became convinced that they were right, and that all the theologians -- all the believers in "special creation" were absolutely wrong.
The Garden of Eden faded away, Adam and Eve fell back to dust, the snake crawled into the grass, and Jehovah became a miserable myth.
”
”
Robert G. Ingersoll
“
You're not going to believe this," Charlie went on, "but I knew on that first day that I was going to fall in love with you. You hadn't been yelling at Logan in my front yard for even sixty seconds before I knew. I felt it. I called it! It was so predictable."
He took a minute to rub his eyes. Then he went on. "I like you like crazy, Emma. I didn't even know it was possible to like another person this much." He shook his head. "And up until today, I wanted nothing more than to make you like me, too." He frowned, like he was thinking. "Maybe this is my punishment. Maybe you were right about self-fulfilling prophecies. All I know is, I really don't want to die. And the reason I don't want to die is because I just want more time with you.
”
”
Katherine Center (The Rom-Commers)
“
Dr. Ben-Judah gave what Rayford considered a brilliant example of how to easily identify someone with just a few marks. “Despite the billions of people who still populate this planet, you can put a postcard in the mail with just a few distinctions on it, and I will be the only person to receive it. You eliminate much of the world when you send it to Israel. You narrow it more when it comes to Jerusalem. You cut the potential recipients to a tiny fraction when it goes to a certain street, a certain number, a certain apartment. And then, with my first and last name on it, you have singled me out of billions. That, I believe, is what these prophecies of Messiah do. They eliminate, eliminate, eliminate, until only one person could ever fulfill them.” Dr.
”
”
Tim LaHaye (The Left Behind Complete Set, Series 1-12)
“
The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher.
”
”
John C. Holt (Learning All the Time)
“
It is interesting to see how the judgmental mind extends itself. It may begin by complaining, “What a lousy serve,” then extend to, “I’m serving badly today.” After a few more “bad” serves, the judgment may become further extended to “I have a terrible serve.” Then, “I’m a lousy tennis player,” and finally, “I’m no good.” First the mind judges the event, then groups events, then identifies with the combined event and finally judges itself. As a result, what usually happens is that these self-judgments become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is, they are communications from Self 1 about Self 2 which, after being repeated often enough, become rigidified into expectations or even convictions about Self 2. Then Self 2 begins to live up to these expectations. If you tell yourself often enough that you are a poor server, a kind of hypnotic process takes place. It’s as if Self 2 is being given a role to play—the role of bad server—and plays it to the hilt, suppressing for the time being its true capabilities. Once the judgmental mind establishes a self-identity based on its negative judgments, the role-playing continues to hide the true potential of Self 2 until the hypnotic spell is broken. In short, you start to become what you think.
”
”
W. Timothy Gallwey (The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance)
“
If your boundaries have been injured, you may find that when you are in conflict with someone, you shut down without even being aware of it. This isolates us from love, and keeps us from taking in safe people. Kate had been quite controlled by her overprotective mother. She’d always been warned that she was sickly, would get hit by cars, and didn’t know how to care for herself well. So she fulfilled all those prophecies. Having no sense of strong boundaries, Kate had great difficulty taking risks and connecting with people. The only safe people were at her home. Finally, however, with a supportive church group, Kate set limits on her time with her mom, made friends in her singles’ group, and stayed connected to her new spiritual family. People who have trouble with boundaries may exhibit the following symptoms: blaming others, codependency, depression, difficulties with being alone, disorganization and lack of direction, extreme dependency, feelings of being let down, feelings of obligation, generalized anxiety, identity confusion, impulsiveness, inability to say no, isolation, masochism, overresponsibility and guilt, panic, passive-aggressive behavior, procrastination and inability to follow through, resentment, substance abuse and eating disorders, thought problems and obsessive-compulsive problems, underresponsibility, and victim mentality.
”
”
Henry Cloud (Safe People: How to Find Relationships That Are Good for You and Avoid Those That Aren't)
“
From birth to death and further on
As we were born and introduced into this world,
We had a gift hard to express by word
And somewhere in our continuous road,
It kind of lost it sense and turned.
There was that time we sure remember,
When everything was now and 'till forever
Children with no worries and no regrets,
The only goal was making a few friends.
But later on everything has changed,
By minds that had it all arranged
To bring the people into stress,
Into creating their own mess.
We have been slaved by our own mind,
Turned into something out of our kind
Slowly faded away from the present time,
Forced to believe in lies, in fights and crime.
They made it clearly a fight of the ego,
A never ending war that won't just go
They made it a competitive game,
To seek selfish materialistic fame.
They turned us one against eachother,
Man against man, brother against brother
Dividing us by religion and skin color,
Making us fight to death over a dollar.
Making us lose ourselves in sadly thoughts,
Wasting our days by living in the past
Depressed and haunted by the memories,
And yet still hoping to fly in our dreams.
Some of us tried learning how to dance,
Step after step, giving our soul a new chance
Some of us left our ego vanish into sounds,
Thus being aware of our natural bounce.
Some tried expressing in their rhymes,
The voice of a generation which never dies
They reached eternity through poetry
Leaving the teachings that shall fulfill the prophecy
Others have found their way through spirituality,
Becoming conscious of the human duality
Seeking the spiritual enlightenment,
Of escaping an ego-oriented fighting
Science, philosophy, religion,
Try to explain the human origin.
Maybe changes are yet to come,
And it shall be better for some
Death's for the spirit not an end,
But a relieving of the embodiment
So I believe that furthermore,
We'll understand the power of our soul
But leaving behind all we know,
And all that we might not yet know
It all resumes to that certain truth,
That we all seek to once conclude.
”
”
Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache
“
Though diagnosis is unquestionably critical in treatment considerations for many severe conditions with a biological substrate (for example, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, major affective disorders, temporal lobe epilepsy, drug toxicity, organic or brain disease from toxins, degenerative causes, or infectious agents), diagnosis is often counterproductive in the everyday psychotherapy of less severely impaired patients. Why? For one thing, psychotherapy consists of a gradual unfolding process wherein the therapist attempts to know the patient as fully as possible. A diagnosis limits vision; it diminishes ability to relate to the other as a person. Once we make a diagnosis, we tend to selectively inattend to aspects of the patient that do not fit into that particular diagnosis, and correspondingly overattend to subtle features that appear to confirm an initial diagnosis. What’s more, a diagnosis may act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Relating to a patient as a “borderline” or a “hysteric” may serve to stimulate and perpetuate those very traits. Indeed, there is a long history of iatrogenic influence on the shape of clinical entities, including the current controversy about multiple-personality disorder and repressed memories of sexual abuse. And keep in mind, too, the low reliability of the DSM personality disorder category (the very patients often engaging in longer-term psychotherapy).
”
”
Irvin D. Yalom (The Gift of Therapy: An Open Letter to a New Generation of Therapists and Their Patients)
“
-Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever 'truer.' The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
-The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to 'landscape' the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
-Symmetry demands an actual + virtualfuture, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
-Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future?
-One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each 'shell' (the present) encased inside a nest of 'shells' (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of 'now' likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
-Proposition: I am in love with Luisa Ray.
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
Marketa really desired, with both her body and her senses, the women she considered Karel's mistresses. And she also desired them with her head: fulfilling the prophecy of her old math teacher, she wanted - at least to the limits of the disastrous contract - to show herself enterprising and playful, and to astonish Karel.
But as soon as she found herself naked with them on the wide daybed, the sensual wanderings immediately vanished from her mind, and seeing her husband was enough to return her to her role, the role of the better one, the one who is wronged, Even when she was with Eva, whom she loved very much and of whom she was not jealous, the presence of the man she loved too well weighed heavily on her, stifling the pleasure of the senses.
The moment she removed his head from the body, she felt the strange and intoxicating touch of freedom. That anonymity of the body was a suddenly discovered paradise. With an odd delight, she expelled her wounded and too vigilant soul and was transformed into a simple body without past or memory, but all the more eager and receptive. She tenderly caressed Eva's face, while the headless body moved vigorously on top of her.
But here the headless body interrupted his movements and, in a voice that reminded her unpleasantly of Karel's, uttered unbelievably idiotic words: "I'm Bobby Fischer! I'm Bobby Fischer!"
It was like being awakened from a dream. And just then, as she lay snuggled against Eva (as the awakening sleeper snuggles against his pillow to hide from the dim first light of day), Eva had asked her, "All right?" and she had consented with a sign, pressing her lips against Eva's. She had always loved her, but today for the first time sh loved her with all her senses, for herself, for her body, and for her skin, becoming intoxicated with this fleshly love as with a sudden revelation.
Afterward, while they lay side by side on their stomachs, with their buttocks slightly raised, Marketa could feel on her skin that the infinitely efficient body was again fixing its eyes on hers and at any moment was going to start again making love to them. She tried to ignore the voice talking about seeing beautiful Mrs. Nora, tried simply to be a body hearing nothing while lying pressed between a very soft-skinned girlfriend and some headless man.
”
”
Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)