Quotes & Sayings About Self Fulfilling Prophecy

If you teach a generation of children that they are sinful creatures by nature, that left on their own they are morally corrupt, deserving of eternal torment in Hell, that they are not to be trusted to think their own (selfish, evil) thoughts, all of this can become - has become - a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Dale McGowan

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

Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. What you believe about Life will be your experience of Life. — Neale Donald Walsch

Faith is the opposite of resentment, cynicism, and negativity. Faith is always, finally, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Faith actually begins to create what it desires. Faith always recreates the good world. — Richard Rohr

The only thing I hate worse than prophecy is self-fulfilling prophecy — Bill Maher

The most important thing is not to let fundraising get you down. Startups live or die on morale. If you let the difficulty of raising money destroy your morale, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Paul Graham

The law of self-fulfilling prophecy says that you get what you expect. So why not create great expectations and the highest vision possible of yourself and your world? — Mark Victor Hansen

Meetings had never been her strong suit. She felt like she was playing an away game whenever she sat down in a conference room. Her awareness of this got in the way and turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Neal Stephenson

In good times, pessimism is a luxury; but in bad times, pessimism is a self-fulfilling and fatal prophecy. — David Brin

If I say, "I am weak," I ensure that I stay weak. If I say, "I cannot," "I'm not the type to," "I am not able," then I set up a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I think of myself, so I shall be. — Vironika Tugaleva

Every quirky girl doesn't have to be the best-friend character. It's a very limiting and self-fulfilling prophecy. People only write things that will get green-lit, so they write to those stereotypes. — Felicia Day

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

Positive self-expectancy is the first, most outwardly identifiable quality of a top-achieving, winning human being. Positive self-expectancy is pure and simple optimism: real enthusiasm for everything you do ... [while] expecting the most favorable result from your own actions. There never was a winner who didn't expect to win in advance. Winners understand that life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And they know that you usually get what you expect in the long run. — Denis Waitley

Calling a child "rebellious" has the equivalent effect of calling a child that is struggling in school "stupid." It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Tim Kimmel

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

Lying is common in social life, often done for benign purposes, seldom draws severe sanctions, and many of the most notable leaders, including the late Steve Jobs, were consummate prevaricators. Told with enough persistence and conviction, what was once untrue can become true, in a self-fulfilling prophecy sort of way. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

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

Pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act. — Howard Zinn

A self-fulfilling prophecy is an assumption or prediction that, purely as a result of having been made, cause the expected or predicted event to occur and thus confirms its own 'accuracy.' — Paul Watzlawick

I have great faith in optimism as a guiding principle, if only because it offers us the opportunity of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Arthur C. Clarke

They hope for the Apocalypse like a self-fulfilling prophecy
Tell me when do we stop it?
Do they ask you your religion before you rent an apartment?
Is the answer burning Korans so that we can defend Islamics? — Talib Kweli

Self-doubt is a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Laurell K. Hamilton

I opened my mouth and projectile-vomited on her from head to toe. The more I retched, the more I had to retch. It was a disgusting self-fulfilling prophecy. Her howls and screeches were music to my indebted ears. Her hair was covered and her net top held my gift beautifully. — Robyn Peterman

Every theory is a self-fulfilling prophecy that orders experience into the framework it provides. — Ruth Hubbard

I figure it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy; if I make a successful arena rock record, I'll wind up playing arenas! I wouldn't mind being back in that kind of venue because of the kinds of things you can do with production. You can make your shows more interesting, which would be fun to do. — Todd Rundgren

IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us. — Huey Newton

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

The problem with worry is that we attract the very thing we are trying to avoid. We live a self-fulfilling prophecy. Life keeps its agreement with us through our beliefs, because whatever we think about, we bring about. Life is like a mirror. It reflects back whatever image we present to it. — Robert Anthony

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

Pessimism is not only unwarranted, it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think the cause is lost, it will be. No one works hard for a cause they think will lose. — Lawrence Reed

People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Tony Robbins

Optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Jeannette Walls

Whenever you begin to conclude, "I can't win," and "What's the use?" you've set yourself up for failure. Your pessimism becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. — James C. Dobson

Our perceptions of reality are only a relationship to what is actually out there. Perceptions are influenced by context, by previous life experience, and by our tendency to seek out
evidence to confirm our expectations. This drive to confirm, as
argued by social physiologists, results in what is known as self fulfilling prophecy. — Derric Yuh Ndim

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 Holt

As your lover describes you, so you are. — Jeanette Winterson

It was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Sam Walton

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

Lose the pessimism, Ms. Lane. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Karen Marie Moning

Fear becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thinking that there is something to be avoided manifests something to avoid. — Vironika Tugaleva

Many of us grow up thinking of mistakes as bad, viewing errors as evidence of fundamental incapacity. This negative thinking pattern can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, which undermines the learning process. To maximize our learning it is essential to ask: "How can we get the most from every mistake we make?" — Tony Buzan

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

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 Gray

One reason women avoid stretch assignments and new challenges is that they worry too much about whether they currently have the skills they need for a new role. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, since so many abilities are acquired on the job. An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements.7 — Sheryl Sandberg

A child in the position of confirming a negative stereotype may respond with especially intense anxiety and reduced motivation, amplifying a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. — Laura Beck

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The belief in the inevitability of war is a self-fulfilling prophecy ... We need an alternative vision, to see the world as one, as interconnected. — Dennis Kucinich

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning. — Robert K. Merton

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

Dare to believe in the reality of your assumption
and watch the world play its part
relative to to its fulfillment. — Neville Goddard

My first job was as an assistant in the local library. Self-fulfilling prophecy? — Jodi Picoult

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

I've learned a lot about perspective, about appreciating when you're healthy, the things that you have. I decided I was a super healer. I really believe in self-fulfilling prophecy that you are what you think you are. — Simon Whitfield

When the government pays, health care's lack of affordability becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In health care, as in other things, government is the high-cost producer. — Arnold Kling

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

A single, one-dimensional way of thinking has created a monoculture of the mind. And the monoculture of the mind has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is the root of why we have pitted equity against ecology and sustainability against justice. — Vandana Shiva

If you think you'll always let people down, that's all you'll ever do, I said. — Julia Claiborne Johnson

Al Gore is producing enough hot air to make his doomsday predictions about global warming a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Joseph Farah

When you say something or sing something enough times, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's almost like casting spells. I don't mean necessarily in the flighty, 'I'm going to go buy a cloak with a hood now' way. — Feist

Believe in yourself. Under-confidence leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that you are not good enough for your work. — Roopleen

As with Hobbes, we see again, the power of fiction. Rousseau's acount of natural man was no more real than Hobbes's, but following the same pattern, once it became the accepted story of human origins, it thereby exercised the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In imagining Rousseau to be right, we have become what Rousseau imagined. — Benjamin Wiker

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

I didn't know it yet, but he would become one of our high school's super-athletes. There were hints of athletic (and, presumably, sexual) prowess there. For one, boys as ridiculously Abercrombie- esque good-looking as he was are always sports stars throughout high school. It is a rule, a self- fulfilling prophecy. It seems as if, sometime during elementary school, coaches make note of the little boys with the most classic bone structure and the best height projections and kidnap them, training them under cover of night. Not all of them will make it in college ball (that's what people call it, right?) because by the time they're all seniors, many of them will have been riding more on the sportsman-like nature of their faces than their actual abilities. But until that day, coaches will keep putting them on the field in the most prominent and visually appealing positions because they just kind of look like that's where they should be. At least I'm pretty sure that is what's going on. — Katie Heaney

The stories I tell myself about myself are contexts for what I believe is possible. These stories affect not only my attitudes about myself and others, but affect my behavior in what could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. — Sharon Weil

If you expect the battle to be insurmountable,
you've met the enemy.
It's you. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

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 Holt

Oppression has no logic
just a self-fulfilling prophecy, justified by a self-perpetuating system. — Gloria Steinem

In order to break your child's negative cycle, you must first break your own cycle of negative perception. You must take on a strengths-based perspective. Look for the good, which in some cases may require you to get creative. Do this even when it's hard. This sends a powerful message to children even when they are behaving poorly. You are sending the message that you believe in them, you see that there is more to them than their bad behavior, and you are painting a future picture of what they can become. — Daniel Bates

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

Life is self-fulfilling prophecy. — Denis Waitley

It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy: the great comedy that comes from great pain. — Brian Dunkleman

Therefore, as a player, as a coach, even though we might have lost in a season or not won a championship, it was like a self-fulfilling prophecy that I'm going to win some time. I've never felt myself a loser. — Mike Krzyzewski

Whatever we expect with confidence becomes our own self-fulfilling prophecy. — Brian Tracy