Philosophy & Thought: Free Will & Fate Quotes

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

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom"

Viktor E. Frankl, Psychologist

"A human being is a deciding being"

Viktor E. Frankl, Psychologist

"Everything can be taken from a man or a woman, but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way"

Viktor E. Frankl, Psychologist

"And I always voted at my party's call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all"

William Gilbert, Composer

William Gilbert

"Fate is written in the face"

Federico Fellini, Director

Federico Fellini

"People without firmness of character love to make up a fate for themselves; that relieves them of the necessity of having their own will and of taking responsibility for themselves"

Ivan Turgenev, Novelist

Ivan Turgenev

"In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness"

Ivan Turgenev, Novelist

Ivan Turgenev

"As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss"

Noam Chomsky, Activist

Noam Chomsky

"All human actions are equivalent... And all are on principle doomed to failure"

Carl Sandburg, Poet

Carl Sandburg

"Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you"

Delmore Schwartz, Poet

Delmore Schwartz

"What's coming will come, and we'll just have to meet it when it does"

J. K. Rowling, Author

"It is our choices... that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities"

J. K. Rowling, Author

"Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates"

J. K. Rowling, Author

"I think God destined that I play. I think it's all in the books already"

Michelle Wie, Athlete

Michelle Wie

"The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual"

Maximilien Robespierre, Leader

Maximilien Robespierre

"Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined ETERNALLY to reenact their escape"

Antonin Artaud, Dramatist

Antonin Artaud

"How fortune brings to earth the over-sure!"

Petrarch, Poet

Petrarch

"The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary"

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Novelist

"The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause"

Henri Bergson, Philosopher

"I'm amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I'm so lucky, though my mum always says, "You make your own luck""

Orlando Bloom, Actor

Orlando Bloom

"There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny"

Edith Wharton, Author

Edith Wharton

"And the terror itself is an example of the world's uncontrollability"

Ulrich Beck, Sociologist

Ulrich Beck

"To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate"

John Glenn, Astronaut

John Glenn

"Events are not a matter of chance"

Gamal Abdel Nasser, Leader

"I cannot, if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of sight: wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps"

Horatio Nelson, Soldier

Horatio Nelson

"For what is liberty but the unhampered translation of will into act?"

Cyril Connolly, Journalist

"God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit"

Arthur Erickson, Architect

Arthur Erickson

"Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!"

Doris Lessing, Writer

"Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars"

Tom Robbins, Author

Tom Robbins

"No amount of thought can ever reveal what comes unexpectedly"

Arthur Erickson, Architect

Arthur Erickson

"If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; let us fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory"

Miguel de Unamuno, Educator

Miguel de Unamuno

"I think that everything happens for a reason, everything happens when it's going to happen"

Lou Reed, Musician

"Not only does God play dice, but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen"

Stephen Hawking, Physicist

Stephen Hawking

"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road"

Stephen Hawking, Physicist

Stephen Hawking

"God not only plays dice, he also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen"

Stephen Hawking, Physicist

Stephen Hawking

"Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice?"

Wislawa Szymborska, Poet

Wislawa Szymborska

"Two urns on Jove's high throne have ever stood, the source of evil one, and one of good; from thence the cup of mortal man he fills, blessings to these, to those distributes ills; to most he mingles both"

Homer, Poet

Homer

"I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice"

Muriel Rukeyser, Poet

"I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent"

Giacomo Casanova, Celebrity

Giacomo Casanova

"The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it"

Richard Whately, Writer

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