Fate and Free Will Quotes

If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next—if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions—you'd be doomed. You'd be ruined as God. You'd be a stone. You'd never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You'd never love anyone, ever again. You'd never dare to.

If people knew the story of their lives, how many would then elect to live them?

Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.

In discourse more sweet; For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense. Others apart sat on a hill retir'd, In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate, Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute; And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost.

But as the unthought-on accident is guilty To what we wildly do, so we profess Ourselves to be the slaves of chance, and flies Of every wind that blows.

Everything that is happening at this moment is a result of the choices you've made in the past.

When you look at something that's so extraordinary, like a man who is traveling back in time to prevent JFK's assassination, for me, as an actor, you're still trying to seed it in some sort of reality.

True love should be, according to its origin, entirely arbitrary and entirely accidental at the same time; it should seem both necessary and free; in keeping with its nature, however, it should be both destiny and virtue and appear as a mystery and a miracle.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must act as if we are not, or die of despair.

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

We make our fortunes and we call them fate.

Everything that happens is supposed to be And it's all pre-determined, can't change your destiny Guess I'll just keep moving, someday maybe I'll get to where I'm going

I believe in fate, never in chance.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they? No. It's never like what you expected. Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them?

Iliad by Homer is one of the great stories in literature. And I thought its themes really resonated today, whether that was my projection or Homer's intentions. It didn't seem like we had come very far.

Fortune, men say, doth give too much to many, But yet she never gave enough to any.

Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgment Day: We never asked to be born in the first place.

The truth is, everything that's happened was supposed to happen. That doesn't mean I don't look back and think, God, I wish I hadn't had to go through some of those things.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

If I believed in fate I'd be very curious why I picked the name Silver Jews.

The future was with Fate. The present was our own.