Destiny quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside destiny — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I do not speak with any fondness but the language of coolest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town whichwas appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America."
"If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character."
"Enlarge not thy destiny, said the oracle: endeavor not to do more than is given thee in charge."
"Alone.'Twas her destiny to be ever surrounded by others, yet ever alone."
"Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around."
"We're going to become the martians when we land there. When we explore and build communities, we become the martians. That's a wonderful destiny for all of us."
"Destiny is another name for humanity's half-hearted yet persistent search for death. Again and again peoples have had the chance to live and show what would happen if human life were irrigated by continual happiness; and they have preferred to blow up the canals and perish of drought."
"Beautiful it is, and a gleam from the same eternal pole-star visible amid the destinies of men, that all talent, all intellect, is in the first plane moral. What a world were this otherwise!"
"Without question, we make choices - and those choices have consequences. So can you control your own destiny? To a degree, certainly. Must you have faith in serendipity? Without question, you'd better. Otherwise you're foolish."
"The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought."
"You can't change your life. This mode in literature goes against the more middle-brown mode, which is about shaping your destiny, changing it. You can't change it, you just become passive in front of it. Even if we live in a godless universe, there are paths set, there are trajectories, like bumper cars just pulling those trajectories, colliding."
"Decisions decide destiny, there is no action without decision"
"Decision equals destiny."
"Decision is the ultimate power. Decisions shape destiny."
"Most of society thinks that biography is destiny, that the past equals the future, and of course it does if you live there...but what we really have to remind ourselves is that decision is the ultimate power."
"Is is in the small decisions you and I make every day that create our destiny."
"Your biography is not your destiny, your decisions are."
"It's the great soul that surrenders itself to fate, but a puny degenerate thing that struggles."
"I don't use the term 'miracle' lightly. I don't believe in God, or reincarnation, or destiny, or the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes."
"Marriage is traditionally the destiny offered to women by society. Most women are married or have been, or plan to be or suffer from not being."
