Wishful thinking is no more help in predicting the future than fear, superstition or depression.
Octavia Butler (1947-2006) American writer
Essay (2000-05), “A Few Rules for Predicting the Future,” Essence Magazine
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Quotations about:
wishful thinking
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REASON, v.i. To weight probabilities in the scales of desire.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) American writer and journalist
“Reason,” The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
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Originally published in the "Cynic's Dictionary" column in the San Francisco Examiner.
When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad ones you did do — well, that’s Memoirs.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Essay (1932-03-12), “Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat to Senator Borah,” Saturday Evening Post
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William Borah (1885-1940) was a US Senator from Idaho (1907-1940). He was progressive politically, but an isolationist, a key figure in blocking US approval of the Versailles Treaty or joining the League of Nations.
Collected in Donald Day (ed.), The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949), and Steven K Gragert (ed.), More Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat (1982).
Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.
Clementine Paddleford (1898-1967) American food writer
A Flower for My Mother (1958)
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Quoting her mother.
Our blunders mostly come from letting our wishes interpret our duties, or hide from us plain indications of unwelcome tasks.
Alexander Maclaren (1826-1910) Scots-English minister, homilist
The Secret of Power: And Other Sermons, Sermon 15 “Moses and Hobab” (1902)
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Impossibilities are merely things of which we have not learned, or which we do not wish to happen.
Charles Chesnutt (1858-1932) American author, essayist, civil rights activist, lawyer
The Marrow of Tradition (1901)
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His religion at best is an anxious wish, — like that of Rabelais, a great Perhaps.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish essayist and historian
“Burns,” Edinburgh Review No. 96, Art. 1 (1828-12)
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A review of Lockhart, The Life of Robert Burns (1828).
