Philosophy & Thought: Free Will & Fate Quotes

Explore the tension between personal agency and cosmic design through a curated selection of quotations. These voices consider how choices, chance, and necessity shape a life. From classical philosophers to contemporary writers, the collection balances skepticism and hope, inviting you to weigh responsibility, randomness, and meaning. Read to compare perspectives on autonomy, destiny, moral accountability, and the stories we tell to reconcile them.

Similar topics:Deep Ethics & Morality Reason & Logic Truth Wisdom

"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it"

Jean de La Fontaine, Poet

Jean de La Fontaine

"We forge the chains we wear in life"

Charles Dickens, Novelist

Charles Dickens

"Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men"

Lord Byron, Poet

Lord Byron

"Anatomy is destiny"

Sigmund Freud, Psychologist

Sigmund Freud

"Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately"

Henry A. Kissinger, Statesman

Henry A. Kissinger

"We are all born marked for evil"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

Charles Baudelaire

"When Karim and his group heard about Saddam coming, they wanted to kill him, but fate had other ideas"

Saadi, Poet

Saadi

"The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

Napoleon Bonaparte

"The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man"

Huey Newton, Activist

Huey Newton

"Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered"

William Shakespeare, Dramatist

William Shakespeare

"Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher

Jean-Paul Sartre

"Everything in life is luck"

Donald Trump, Businessman

Donald Trump

"A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants"

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher

Arthur Schopenhauer

"A man's character is his fate"

Heraclitus, Philosopher

Heraclitus

"Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change"

Stephen Covey, Businessman

Stephen Covey

"If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans"

Woody Allen, Director

Woody Allen

"Every man is the architect of his own fortune"

Sallust, Historian

Sallust

"When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

Oscar Wilde

"As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport"

William Shakespeare, Dramatist

William Shakespeare

"Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game"

Voltaire, Writer

Voltaire

"Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider"

Saint Augustine, Saint

Saint Augustine

"The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us"

Thomas Huxley, Scientist

Thomas Huxley

"Some folk want their luck buttered"

Thomas Hardy, Novelist

Thomas Hardy

"How shall a man escape from that which is written; How shall he flee from his destiny?"

Ferdowsi, Poet

"There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

Napoleon Bonaparte

"Destiny is the prison and chain of the ignorant. Understand that destiny like the water of the Nile: Water before the faithful, blood before the unbeliever"

Muhammad Iqbal, Poet

Muhammad Iqbal

"Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time"

Paulo Coelho, Novelist

Paulo Coelho

"When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man"

Stanley Kubrick, Director

Stanley Kubrick

"Nothing is inevitable until it happens"

A. J. P. Taylor, Historian

A. J. P. Taylor

"I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all"

James A. Baldwin, Author

James A. Baldwin

"We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more"

Carl Jung, Psychologist

Carl Jung

"Islam is itself destiny and will not suffer destiny"

Muhammad Iqbal, Poet

Muhammad Iqbal

"I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved"

Søren Kierkegaard, Philosopher

Søren Kierkegaard

"Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven"

Charles Spurgeon, Clergyman

Charles Spurgeon

"A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance"

Henri Poincare, Mathematician

Henri Poincare

"It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul"

William Ernest Henley, Poet

"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions"

Carter G. Woodson, Historian

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche

"Man is free at the moment he wishes to be"

Voltaire, Writer

Voltaire

"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does"

Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher

Jean-Paul Sartre

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