“America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.”

“Man is born to be happy and free, and everywhere he is enslaved and unhappy! Society exists for the purpose of conserving his rights and perfecting his being, and everywhere society degrades and oppresses him! The time has come to remind him of his true destiny.”

Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) French revolutionary lawyer and politician

“Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

“Every man has his destiny. But who needs to go to a fortune-teller to find it? Do I go to a chef to find out if I'm hungry?”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

“There is no gentleman in America, but he who feels that every man is his equal in natural right, and who does not know that he is cheated if every man does not have fair play.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

“The ancient covenant is in pieces; man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance. His destiny is nowhere spelled out, nor is his duty. The kingdom above or the darkness below: it is for him to choose.”

Jacques Monod (1910–1976) French biologist

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

“…he felt frustrated, his sense of fate and direction subverted by banalities - the frustration of the man who, having thought himself following his destiny, finds he is actually on the A318 to New Malden.”

David Baddiel (1964) British comedian, novelist and television presenter

“Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty.”

Chief Joseph (1840–1904) Nez Percé Chieftain

“A true seeker could not accept any teachings, not if he sincerely wished to find something. But he who had found, could give his approval to every path, every goal; nothing separated him from all of the other thousands who lived in eternity, who breathed the Divine.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer