Philosophy & Thought: Free Will & Fate Quotes

"My whole life has been decided by fate"

Sharon Tate, Actress

"Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me, for no good reason at all"

Martin Goldsmith, Writer

"Luck is merely an illusion, trusted by the ignorant and chased by the foolish"

Timothy Zahn, Writer

"A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts are the result of sudden impulse and accident than of that reason of which we so much boast"

Peter Cooper, Inventor

"The minute those two little particles inside a woman's womb have joined together, billions of decisions have been made. A thing like that has to come from entropy"

Rex Stout, Writer

"Fortune is a great deceiver. She sells very dear the things she seems to give us"

Vincent Voiture, Poet

"We don't invent our natures. They're issued to us along with our lungs, our pancreas and everything else"

Michael E. Mann, Scientist

"History shows you don't know what the future brings"

Rick Wagoner, Businessman

"It is for each of us freely to choose whom we shall serve, and find in that obedience our freedom"

Mary Richards

"You can have immediate regrets, but if you look at stuff and say, 'Things happen for a reason', there's a fatalistic thing about it. Something will happen that will justify it in some way"

Martin Landau, Actor

"The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?"

David McCullough, Historian

"I am deeply aware of the dimension of luck. It's so important to be prepared to receive it, but it is a major factor. There's no question!"

J. Carter Brown

"I don't do nothing, I don't want to do"

John Lee Hooker, Musician

"Yes, there's a luck in most things; and in none more than being born at the right time"

Edmund C. Stedman, Poet

"I was born 'neath a clouded star"

Julia Ward Howe, Activist

"Every man is his own ancestor, and every man is his own heir. He devises his own future, and he inherits his own past"

Frederick Henry Hedge, Clergyman

"I mean, I grew up with pretty down-to-earth, atheist parents, but I was born a Pisces"

Melissa Auf der Maur, Musician

"If I thought that any of this was pre ordained, then it takes away any kind of incentive to struggle, or to put up with things, to reach for those impossible dreams, all those dramatic things"

Gary Numan, Musician

"The acts of the human race on the world's stage have doubtless a coherent unity, but the meaning of the vast tragedy enacted will be visible only to the eye of God, until the end, which will reveal it perhaps to the last man"

Alfred de Vigny, Poet

"One pits his wits against apparently inscrutable nature, wooing her with ardor, but nature is blind justice who cannot recognize personal identity"

Charles Brenton Huggins, Scientist

"To morrow, I believe, is to be an eclipse of the sun, and I think it perfectly meet and proper that the sun in the heavens, and the glory of the Republic should both go into obscurity and darkness together"

Benjamin F. Wade, Politician

"We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life"

Anthony Daniels, Actor

"Let whatever is going to happen to me happen. I'm expecting the worst for myself and I'm resigned to it"

Alexander Dubcek, Politician

"I came into the world at the right time"

Helge Ingstad, Explorer

"But if I've heard this saying once, I've heard it a thousand times-- everything happens for a reason. And possibly it does. I just haven't found the reason that this all happened yet"

Jerry Lawler, Entertainer

"We control the content of our dreams"

Thom Gunn, Poet

"Natures' curriculum cannot be changed"

Martin Lewis Perl, Physicist

"Wherefore the race being not to the swift, etc. but time and chance happening to all men, I leave the Judgement of the whole to the Candid, of whose correction I shall never be impatient"

William Petty, Economist

"The compulsion of fate is bitter"

Christoph Martin Wieland, Poet

"Man blindly works the will of fate"

Christoph Martin Wieland, Poet

"Every man is his own ancestor, and every man his own heir. He devises his own fortune, and he inherits his own past"

Francis Herbert Hedge, Philosopher

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