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

And the Russians certainly don't have it. If a woman shows up in a fur coat, I just assume she's a crook. And that's me, the nice American. The assumption that you can't make money honestly is a killer.
Esther Dyson

Blind faith, no matter how passionately expressed, will not suffice. Science for its part will test relentlessly every assumption about the human condition.
E. O. Wilson

I had furthermore spoken on the assumption that Russia would mobilize, whereas the assumption of the German Government had hitherto been, officially, that Serbia would receive no support; and what I had said must influence the German Government to take the matter seriously.
Edward Grey

I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.
Warren Buffett

I thin many people's deviant behavior starts with dreams because dreams are so non-linear... as if there's an assumption that everything has to be linear or has to be plotted.
Robyn Hitchcock

I think that my main criticism in that book was directed at the general assumption that adaptation characterizes populations and species, rather than simply the individuals in the populations and species.
George C. Williams

I think that's created a healthy environment. The comparisons to "ER" were maddening and there was this assumption that the two of us were looking at each other with rage and resentment, which was also not the case.
Adam Arkin

I was not sympathetic to the assumption that criminals had radically different motivations from everyone else.
Gary Becker

I'll tell you what the real problem is: These people are working under the assumption that they know better about what is good for kids, what kids need to learn to get ahead in this world.
Daniel Greenberg

I've been worked over by the English press because there's an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife's, and for that matter that my wife's politics are identical with her politics of 20 years ago.
Stephen Rea

If a radical devolution of powers was possible, it would have been done before. The assumption of states' rights is gone. There's no support for it in the Supreme Court and there's no support for it in public opinion.
James Q. Wilson

If some woman tells me how she feels about something, my immediate assumption is that she wants an answer, or that she wants me to solve her problem. In fact, all she wants to do is share, or show how she feels.
Fred Ward

If they are, then the only ultimate truths are the particulars of concrete experience, and no postulate or general assumption is inherent in science until its proceedings become systematic, or the truths already reached give direction to further research.
Chauncey Wright

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.
Orville Wright

If you look at the history of big obstacles in understanding our world, there's usually an intuitive assumption underlying them that's wrong.
Jeff Hawkins

If you're black in America, race is a factor in your life. Start with that assumption.
Henry Hampton

In the end, my reasons for moving down the timeline and introducing a new cast have more to do with keeping myself entertained, on the assumption that if I get bored, my readers are going to be even more bored.
Raymond E. Feist

It seems to me the most important issue in the LGBT community is the right to be queer-the right to be free of the heterosexual assumption.
Jasmine Guy

My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right.
Peter Gay