“We make our own fortunes and we call them fate.”

“… there was no such thing as curses. People make and break their own fortunes -they are the masters of their own fate.”

“We cannot stake our own fate on others, no matter how close our relationship with them.”

“We can spend our days bemoaning our losses, or we can grow from them. Ultimately the choice is ours. We can be victims of circumstance or masters of our own fate, but make no mistake, we cannot be both.
The Walk - Epilogue Page 288”

“It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.”

“Tis strange how the heart can create
Or colour from itself its fate;
We make ourselves our own distress,
We are ourselves our happiness.”

“We create our fate every day… most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”

“The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire.”

“What fabrications they are, mothers. Scarecrows, wax dolls for us to stick pins into, crude diagrams. We deny them an existence of their own, we make them up to suit ourselves -- our own hungers, our own wishes, our own deficiencies.”

“I am strongly of opinion that we require to strengthen our armaments by air and upon the seas in order to make sure that we are still judges of our own fortunes, our own destinies and our own action. … Not to have an adequate air force in the present state of the world is to compromise the foundations of national freedom and independence.”