Philosophy & Thought: Free Will & Fate Quotes

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

"Fortune makes a fool of those she favors too much"

Horace, Poet

"Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers"

Virgil, Writer

"Fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny"

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal"

Arthur C. Clarke, Writer

Arthur C. Clarke

"Events are called inevitable only after they have occurred"

Mason Cooley, Writer

Mason Cooley

"It's a complex fate, being an American, and one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting against a superstitious valuation of Europe"

Henry James, Writer

Henry James

"The man whom God wills to slay in the struggle of life - He first individualizes"

Henrik Ibsen, Poet

Henrik Ibsen

"I agree to, or rather, aspire to my doom"

Pierre Corneille, Dramatist

Pierre Corneille

"An example is often a deceptive mirror, and the order of destiny, so troubling to our thoughts, is not always found written in things past"

Pierre Corneille, Dramatist

Pierre Corneille

"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power"

Rene Descartes, Mathematician

Rene Descartes

"If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable"

Horace Mann, Educator

Horace Mann

"It's like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don't know where your going to end up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It's like the throw of the dice"

Jim Morrison, Musician

Jim Morrison

"Those who trust to chance must abide by the results of chance"

Calvin Coolidge, President

Calvin Coolidge

"Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might"

Aeschylus, Playwright

Aeschylus

"We shall perish by guile just as we slew"

Aeschylus, Playwright

Aeschylus

"From the time I was a kid, I always knew something was going to happen to me. Didn't know exactly what"

Elvis Presley, Musician

Elvis Presley

"Will cannot be quenched against its will"

Dante Alighieri, Poet

Dante Alighieri

"We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours"

Dag Hammarskjold, Diplomat

Dag Hammarskjold

"Kafka truly illustrates the way the environment oppresses the individual. He shows how the unconscious controls our lives"

Manuel Puig, Author

Manuel Puig

"Character is destiny"

Heraclitus, Philosopher

Heraclitus

"All the idols made by man, however terrifying they may be, are in point of fact subordinate to him, and that is why he will always have it in his power to destroy them"

Simone de Beauvoir, Writer

Simone de Beauvoir

"Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it"

James Cash Penney, Businessman

James Cash Penney

"It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started, it could not end otherwise"

Henry A. Kissinger, Statesman

Henry A. Kissinger

"Things we do not expect, happen more frequently than we wish"

Plautus, Playwright

Plautus

"Seek not to know what must not be reveal, for joy only flows where fate is most concealed. A busy person would find their sorrows much more; if future fortunes were known before!"

John Dryden, Poet

John Dryden

"All things are subject to decay, and when fate summons, monarchs must obey"

John Dryden, Poet

John Dryden

"The Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations"

John Adams, President

John Adams

"I have accepted a seat in the House of Representatives, and thereby have consented to my own ruin, to your ruin, and to the ruin of our children. I give you this warning that you may prepare your mind for your fate"

John Adams, President

John Adams

"Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power"

John Adams, President

John Adams

"As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility"

Arnold J. Toynbee, Historian

Arnold J. Toynbee

"How often things occur by mere chance which we dared not even hope for"

Terence, Playwright

Terence

"Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces"

Julius Caesar, Leader

"Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself"

Alfred North Whitehead, Mathematician

Alfred North Whitehead

"Where one person shapes their life by precept and example, there are a thousand who have shaped it by impulse and circumstances"

James Russell Lowell, Poet

James Russell Lowell

"Fate loves the fearless!"

James Russell Lowell, Poet

James Russell Lowell

"When one jumps over the edge, one is bound to land somewhere"

David Herbert Lawrence, Writer

David Herbert Lawrence

"They say geniuses mostly have great mothers. They mostly have sad fates"

David Herbert Lawrence, Writer

David Herbert Lawrence

"One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves"

Gore Vidal, Novelist

Gore Vidal

"I don't envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do, they do and if they do not, they do not"

Gertrude Stein, Author

Gertrude Stein

"To advise is not to compel"

Anton Chekhov, Dramatist

Anton Chekhov

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