Anthony Burgess Quotes

I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist... or maybe even a pessimist.

Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.

I try not to get my hopes up too high with anything, because I'll never be let down that way.

I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within.

I realize more and more how instinctively pessimistic I am of all human kindness -- since I am always so bowled over by it -- and am never surprised by injustice, malice or personal attack.

To expect wickedness from human beings is the best way I know of to avoid surprises. And when I am surprised, it's always pleasantly.

If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.

I conduct my life with an expectation that people will do the right thing. Yet even with all my experience, I am still surprised when they do not.

With total strangers, it had always been my policy to expect the worst. Usually they-and those that you knew best, for that matter-did not disappoint.

I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed. Disappointed in the things that people do; disappointed in the things that people construct. I want things to be better all the time.

What you say about this world I do not quite agree with; I think it a very good world, and only requires a person to be reasonable in his expectations, and not to trust too much to others.

Most of us...are naturally more sanguine and hopeful than logic would justify. We seem to be so constituted that in the absence of any facts to go upon we are happy and self-satisfied; so that the effect of experience is continually to contract our hopes and aspirations

We suppose mankind more honest than they are.

Always think the worst. That way you will avoid too much disappointment in life.

If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope.

Hope is a tease designed to prevent us from accepting reality.

I'm not by nature a cynical person. But sometimes your expectations are different from reality.

I assume that the worst will happen. So I'm never optimistic.

There's a lot to be said for misanthropy.

I just never count on anything. You can't.

It has been my observation and experience, and that of my family, that nothing human works out well.

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

If mankind is naturally good, he is sure going against his nature more and more of the time. It sounds like a bad joke: the paranoids are after us.

The thing that binds us together is that we have both lowered our expectations of life

Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.