Fate quotes
2.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside fate — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I believe in signs....what we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect & attention to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take. When we are on the right path, we follow the signs, and if we occasionally stumble, the Divine comes to our aid, preventing us from making mistakes."
"She was so evidently the victim of the civilization which had produced her, that the links of her bracelet seemed like manacles chaining her to her fate."
"A man goes through many changes in 2000 meters. Some are not very pretty. Some make you hate yourself. Some make you wonder if you've been rowing for only three or four days. To avoid that fate, we prepared for all possibilities. If a meteor landed 10 feet off our stern, we would not blink. [We] Would be aware, yet impassive, to the outside world. Every ounce of energy would be funneled into the water, and not wasted by looking around, worrying about opponents, wondering about things that didn't concern our primary goal-to be the first across the finish line."
"It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few of them for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular estimate of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque."
"Whatever limits us we call fate."
"Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks he is free."
"Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart."
"If failure has the strength to turn your life into bitterness itself, then patience has the strength to turn your life into the sweetest joy. Do not surrender to fate after a single failure. Failure, at most, precedes success."
"I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing."
"Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer."
"It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself."
"We create our fate everyday"
"I don't believe in fate or destiny. I believe in various degrees of hatred, paranoia, and abandonment. However much of that gets heaped upon you doesn't matter - it's only a matter of how much you can take and what it does to you."
"While all bodies share the same fate, all voices do not."
"It is to be remarked that a good many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate waiting them on this earth."
"Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say that we devise their misery. But they themselves- in their depravity- design grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns."
"That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn't entirely conquer - he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation."
"I want to seize fate by the throat."
"To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control, but we can accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately. Individuals, however, are responsible for their own actions which they can examine and control through rigorous self-discipline. Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power. As part of the universal city that is the universe, human beings have a duty of care to all fellow humans. The person who followed these precepts would achieve happiness."
"The more one sees of human fate and the more one examines its secret springs of action, the more one is impressed by the strength of unconscious motives and by the limitations of free choice"
