Quotes & Sayings About Living Up To Society's Expectations

Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its grim and beautiful complexity. The poetic eye was always at work examining the nuance and measuring obscure detail, turning conversation into ultimatum (Steiner) — Elizabeth Winder

It does not matter where we come from or what we look like. If we recognize our abilities, are willing to learn and to use what we know in helping others, we will always have a place in the world. — Ben Carson

People with power tell people without it to cross a chasm they don't want to cross, to reach a goal that isn't their own, to bring back the achievement to the person who took no risks to get what they wanted, who then wears the achievement that is the culmination of someone else's hard work around their neck like gold. — Craig Stone

Just don't ask me to deliver any more satyr babies and we'll get along great. — Rick Riordan

I, a product of the New Frontier and Great Society, honestly believed that the world pretty much owed me a living
all I had to do was wait around in order to live better than my parents. — Anthony Bourdain

I prefer a world with many beliefs and religions.
It stimulates my faith to keep growing day by day. — Toba Beta

Around the time my first marriage of twenty-one years was ending, I had spent a lot of time reflecting on the fairytale promises of living "happily ever after and being "forever in love." I thought about how the expectations of our families, friends, religion and society each contribute to the guilt and shame many of us experience when our partnerships and marriages do not work out the way we expected. The familiar promises of being together until death do us part" seemed antiquated and misguided in our modern world. Why wan't being happy, in love and committed 'for now' a more widely accepted and reasonable vision? — Theresa J. Knight

Too much thinking was still not good for me. — Hermann Hesse

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market. — Ezra Pound

Are you doing what your heart desires, or living up to society's expectations, what friends and family think?
Because the moment you start doing what you love, what you truly feel in your heart, all your cells start working for you. — Ralph Smart

The trick, and it's a tough one, is a common cultural understanding of what kind of failure is okay and what kind leads to disaster. But — Tom Peters

Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a 'living' document. — Al Franken

I got to work with my wife, Lena Olin, for the first time, which was great. I thought it might be difficult in some way to talk to one's wife in a different way but it was so not forced. — Lasse Hallstrom

Survival is fighting, every single day, to climb out of the ruins and into the unknown, come what may.
We are all as strong as we have to be. — Kayla Olson

All those tattoos. A woman could get any tattoo she liked, but they all said the same thing. They were a sign reading AVAILABLE FOR RENT. — Joe Hill

Distance and difference are the secret tonic of creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything. — Jonah Lehrer

It's a lot to live up to. These pressures of achieving. From the moment you're born, you're pounded with the expectations of what you need to actualize in order to become a success. Go to college. Get married. Raise a family. It's what you're supposed to do. The plans you're supposed to make. The life you're supposed to live. Diverge from the norm and you're frowned upon. Questioned. Shunned. There's something wrong with you if you're not interested in improving yourself. If you can't make a commitment of marriage. If you don't want to have children. So people earn a college degree so they can get a good job. They work at a job they hate just to earn a living. They spend two months' salary on an engagement ring. They pop out a couple of kids they don't really want just so they can fit in. Because it's what their parents did. Because it's what society expects you to do. Because it's safer to take the same path everyone else has traveled. Truth is, no one's listening to Robert Frost. — S.G. Browne

Do not allow your sad past to rule your present situation. Unlike a tango, it does not take to two to forgive. — Stephen Richards

Tragedy was foresworn, in ritual denial of the ripe knowledge that we are drawing away from one another, that we share only one thing, share the fear of belonging to another, or to others, or to God; love or money, tender equated in advertising and the world, where only money is currency, and under dead trees and brittle ornaments prehensile hands exchange forgeries of what the heart dare not surrender. — William Gaddis

Teach them the quiet verbs of kindness, to live beyond themselves. — Pat Conroy

We're in our own world, and we're in the world that has been given us outside, and the problem is to achieve3 a harmonious relationship between the two. I come into this society, so I've got to live in terms of this society. It's ridiculous not to live in terms of this society because, unless I do, I'm not living. But I mustn't allow this society to dictate to me how I should live. One has to build up one's own system that may violate the expectations of the society, and sometimes society doesn't accept that. But the task of life is to live within the field provided by the society that is really supporting you. — Joseph Campbell