Bernard Beckett Quotes

I also don't believe that "everything happens for a reason," which is in a similar category of world-views.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

Superstition is the only religion of which base souls are capable of.

Why does anything ever happen? Some things happen and some don't.

You'll find superstition a contagious thing. Some people let it get the better of them.

Superstition is the poison of the mind.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another. What leads to what. What destroys what. What causes what to flourish or die or take another course.

There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.

How weak our mind is; how quickly it is terrified and unbalanced as soon as we are confronted with a small, incomprehensible fact. Instead of dismissing the problem with: "We do not understand because we cannot find the cause," we immediately imagine terrible mysteries and supernatural powers.

Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.

The metaphysical doctrine of determinism simply asserts that all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined. It does not assert that they are known to anybody, or predictable by scientific means. But it asserts that the future is as little changeable as is the past. Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism.

in the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen

I'm still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack.But then,it might not have been a question of right or wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that,in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.

The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.

Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.

There is no luck in life, everything happens for a reason. Every little thing that you do... leads up to a bigger thing. And that's the story of my life.

Fate is unpenetrated causes.

We live in a world of cause and effect.

Most of the time-- 99 percent of the time-- you just don't know how and why the threads are looped together, and that's okay. Do a good thing and something bad happens. Do a bad thing and something good happens. Do nothing and everything explodes.

Anything that happens, happens.

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens must be a link in a chain.