“The outline of our lives, like the candles flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate.”

— Leonard Mlodinow , book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 1, Peering Through The Eyepiece Of Randomness, p. 4

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Leonard Mlodinow 17

American physicist, author and screenwriter 1954

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Source: The Little Big Things: 163 Ways To Pursue Excellence (2010), p. 50.

“Our lives today are not conducted in linear terms. They are much more quantified; a stream of random events is taking place.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

Conversation http://www.jgballard.ca/interviews/macbeth_interview_1967.html with George MacBeth on Third Programme (BBC) (1 February 1967)], published in The New S.F. (1969), edited by Langdon Jones

“Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.”

Bryce Courtenay (1933–2012) Australian novelist

“Like cars in an amusement park, our direction is often determined through collisions.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

“.. In spite of everything, there is still no more wonderful vocation than to continue to tolerate events and to work on in the name of our mission, in the name of that spirit which lives on in our teaching and in our vision of humanity and art, the spirit which can lead us Jews down the true and just path. But along the way, peoples will spill our blood, and that of others.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

In the last lines of his lecture at the Congress of the Jewish Scientific Institute Vilnius, in 1935, as quoted in Marc Chagall - the Russian years 1906 – 1922, editor Christoph Vitali, exhibition catalogue, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 1991, p. 58
after 1930

“Wyrd is the unfolding of our personal destiny. It has sometimes been translated into modern English as "fate." But it is much deeper than that. It does not see our lives as "pre-determined."”

Brian Bates (1944) British academic

Way of Wyrd, Introduction : What is "Wyrd"? http://www.wayofwyrd.com/introduction_pc.html
Context: Wyrd is the unfolding of our personal destiny. It has sometimes been translated into modern English as "fate." But it is much deeper than that. It does not see our lives as "pre-determined." Rather, it is an all-encompassing view which connects us to all things, thoughts, emotions, events in the cosmos as if through the threads of an enormous, invisible but dynamic web. Today, scientists know intellectually that all things are interconnected. But the power of Wyrd is to realise this in our inner being, and to know how to use it to manifest our personal destiny.
Today, through a deep connection with wyrd, we are inspired to see our lives in a new and empowering way. It restores our experience of the healing power of love, nature and creativity. It is about letting into our lives the guidance of an extended universe of spirit. It brings ancient wisdom together with modern science in the service of enhancing our lives, and the integrity of our human presence on the planet.