Quotes about destiny
page 4

“Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life, God, Heart

“If you keep your destiny in mind, every moment in life becomes an opportunity for moving closer to it.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life

“Fate is just another word for people's choices coming to a head. Destiny, coincidence, whatever you name it. It inevitably lies in our hands.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Fate, People

“I knew it like destiny, and at the same time, I knew it as choice.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping

Time

“Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Men, Time, Falseness

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception.”

James Baldwin book Giovanni's Room

Source: Giovanni's Room

People, Strong

“Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship - a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Feeling, Effort

“I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel…”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Source: The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

Travel

“For a man to think he can fulfil his destiny without a woman is a misunderstanding, a miscalculation; it is reckless and folly. Certainly a woman is not everthing, but everything depends on her.”

Yasmina Khadra book What the Day Owes the Night

Source: Ce que le jour doit à la nuit

Thinking, Dependency

“Was it fate? Was it destiny?"
"I think it was Alan Blunt.”

Anthony Horowitz book Ark Angel

Source: Ark Angel

Fate, Thinking

“That a man can change himself…and master his own destiny is the conclusion of every mind who is wide-awake to the power of right thought.”(Christian D. Larson)”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Change

“Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery or simple bad luck.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

Source: God Knows (1984)

Bad luck, Way

“No man or woman born, coward or brave, can shun his destiny.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

“I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life…”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Life

“When you're soulmates, it hits you like lightning, and you know that's the one person in the world you were meant to be with. You don't think you're soulmates; you just know it's your destiny whether you like it or not.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

World, Thinking, Personality

“Dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed”

Paulo Freire book Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 1

“Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.”

Steven Erikson book Midnight Tides

Source: Midnight Tides (2004)

Lie

“It is our destiny to be born beautiful into an ugly age.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Age, Beauty

“The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.”

Václav Havel book Disturbing the Peace

Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage, p. 72

“To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation and when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Universe, Help, Personality

“For the deeds of a man, not the words of a prophecy, are what shape his destiny.”

Lloyd Alexander book The High King

Source: The High King

“In the dictionary, next to the word stress, there is a picture of a midsize mutant stuck inside a dog crate, wondering if her destiny is to be killed or to save the world. Okay, not really. But there should be.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

World, Dogs

“Destiny is all, Ravn liked to tell me, destiny is everything. He would even say it in English, “Wyrd biõ ful ãræd.”

Bernard Cornwell book The Last Kingdom

Source: The Last Kingdom

“For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

God

“But after a moment a sense of waste and ruin overcame him. There they were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their separate destinies that they might as well been half the world apart.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

World, Sense

“Neither you nor I can know your destiny. You may never know it! Destiny isn't always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it's nothing more than struggling through life from day to day.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Life

“A cold realisation washed over me. From now on, my master would not always be there to protect and counsel me.
'This is big. Too big,' I said. 'What do I do?'
'You follow your destiny,' Ryoko said. 'As we all do. With honour and courage.”

Alison Goodman (1966) Australian science-fiction writer

Source: Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

Courage

“We were each other's rock. But did it make us each other's destiny?”

Rachel Hawthorne (1950) American author

Source: Full Moon

“This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty… what you will.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
Context: This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.

Love, God, Books, Beauty

“In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Law, Country

“as I said, I believe in fate. Things happen as they are meant to be. We just have to recognize our destiny.”

Edward Rutherfurd (1948) British writer

Source: Russka: the Novel of Russia

Fate

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Life, Death, Hate, World

“Glorious Destinies get you Glorious Funerals.”

Mercedes Lackey book Winds of Fury

Winds of Fury

“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

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“Destiny is for losers. It's just a lame excuse for letting things happen to you instead of making them happen.”

Cecily von Ziegesar (1970) American writer

Source: I Like It Like That

“What if destiny doesn't care?”

Scott Westerfeld book Goliath

Source: Goliath

“I felt as if I were walking with destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: On his appointment as Prime Minister, May 10, 1940; The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948).

Life, Past

“You can’t go back, Ever. You can’t change the past. It just is…. This is our destiny. Not yours.”

Alyson Nöel book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

Change, Past

“Have all beautiful things sad destinies?”

Jean Rhys book Wide Sargasso Sea

Source: Wide Sargasso Sea

Sadness, Beauty

“And that," put in the Director sententiously, "that is the secret of happiness and virtue — liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World

Happiness, People, Secret

“No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently.”

Agnes de Mille (1905–1993) American dancer and choreographer

Life, Decision

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”

Albert Ellis (1913–2007) American psychologist

Life, Problem, Deep, Success

“There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

“We do not have the right to feel helpless. We must help ourselves. After destiny has delivered what it delivers, we are responsible for our lives.”

Cheryl Strayed (1968) author, memoirist, blogger

Source: Brave Enough

Feeling, Help

“Fate is how your life unfolds when you let fear determine your choices. A path of destiny reveals itself to you, however, when you confront your fear and make conscious choices.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Life, Fate, Fear

“A single day spent doing things which fail to nourish the soul is a day stolen, mutilated, and discarded in the gutter of destiny.”

Michel Faber book The Crimson Petal and the White

Source: The Crimson Petal and the White

Soul

“We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos

Star

“Even the gods cannot change destiny.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Source: Norse Mythology (2017), Chapter 14, “The Death of Balder” (p. 234)

God, Change

“"The free man… believes in destiny and believes that it has need of him," wrote Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher. "Destiny," added Marianne Moore, the spinster poet, when she quoted Buber. "Not fate." What is this distinction Moore takes such care to draw between destiny and fate?”

Fenton Johnson (1953) American novelist

"Going it alone" (2015)

Fate, Quotes, Drawing

“We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.”

Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author

Markings (1964)

“For long ages, too, no notice whatever was taken of the criminal’s “sin”; he was regarded as harmful, not guilty, and looked upon as a piece of destiny; and the criminal on his side took his punishment as a piece of destiny which had overtaken him, and bore it with the same fatalism … In general we may say that punishment tames the man, but does not make him “better.””

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 38-39

Age

“Mother and father abandoned me at birth and the author of my life also did not write any worth or merit on the page of destiny.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

His confessional statements on his own experiences made in Kavitavali quoted in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 49

Life, Birth

“Whether we like it or not, we are all on a journey, a Quest if you will, every day of our lives, and the path we must take is full of perils, and our destiny can never be predicted in advance.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 20

“The Southern emperor rules the Southern land.
Our destiny is writ in Heaven's Book.
How dare ye bandits trespass on our soil?
Ye shall meet your undoing at our hands!”

Lý Thường Kiệt (1019–1105) Vietnamese general and poet

"The Southern emperor rules the Southern land", in An Anthology of Vietnamese Poems, trans. Huỳnh Sanh Thông (Yale University Press, 1996), ISBN 978-0300064100

Books

“Each thing by Destiny
So hastens to grow worse, and backward goes;
As one against a stream his Vessel rowes,
Who if by chance his arm a little slack,
The Boat in the swift Chanel hurries back.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks

Chance

“You got to control your own destiny. You got to keep writin' different stuff. Keep switchin' up and never do the same thing too many times.”

Chris Tucker (1971) American comedian

Quoted in: Joseph Fried (2008). Democrats and Republicans--rhetoric and Reality. p. 247

Time

“Politics is a jungle where destinies change every evening.”

Hema Malini (1948) Indian actress, dancer and politician

Her reflective note. [Data India, http://books.google.com/books?id=bn9DAAAAYAAJ, 2007, Press Institute of India]

Change

“Whether we be young or old,
Our destiny, our being's heart and home,
Is with infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.”

William Wordsworth book The Prelude

Bk. VI, l. 603.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

Hope, Home, Effort, Heart

“If I had remained in India, I would probably have lived my whole life within a five-mile radius of where I was born. I would undoubtedly have married a woman of my identical religious and socioeconomic background. I would almost certainly have become a medical doctor, or an engineer, or a computer programmer. I would have socialized entirely within my ethnic community. I would have a whole set of opinions that could be predicted in advance; indeed, they would not be very different from what my father believed, or his father before him. In sum, my destiny would to a large degree have been given to me… The typical American could come to India, live for 40 years, and take Indian citizenship. But he could not 'become Indian'. He wouldn't see himself that way, nor would most Indians see him that way. In America, by contrast, hundreds of millions have come from far-flung shores and over time they, or at least their children, have in a profound and full sense 'become American'.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Articles, 10 Things to Celebrate: Why I'm an Anti-Anti-American (June 2003)

Life, Children, Way, Communication

“Before anything else I would like to say good day to all of the Venezuelan people, and this Boliviarian message is directed to the brave soldiers in the Parachutist Regimen of Aragua and the Armed Brigade of Valencia. Friends: For now, lamentably, the objectives we considered were not achieved in the capital. That is to say, we here in Caracas have not managed to take power. You did very well over there, but now is the time to reflect; new situations will come and the country must definitively get on the path to a better destiny. So hear my word; hear Commander Chávez, who sends you this message so that you may please reflect and put down your weapons, because now, really, the objectives that we have brought to the national level are impossible to achieve. Friends: Hear this message of solidarity. I thank you for your loyalty, your valor, your exuberance, and I, before this country and before you all, assume responsibility for this Boliviarian militant movement. Thank you.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez to Venezuelan television reporters just before being arrested for his participation in an attempted coup d'état, February 1992.
1992

People, Time, Loyalty, Country

“Once I reveled in a destiny
like no other joy I'd known:
when the warden — reading
my death sentence — wept.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 273
Simple Verses (1891)

Death, Reading, Joy

“In the final analysis the weakness of Black Power is its failure to see that the black man needs the white man and the white man needs the black man. However much we may try to romanticize the slogan, there is no separate black path to power and fulfillment that dies not intersect white paths, and there is no separate white path to power and fulfillment, short of social disaster, that does not share that power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. We are bound together in a single garment of destiny. The language, the cultural patterns, the music, the material prosperity, and even the food of America are an amalgam of black and white.”

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

As quoted in Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
1960s

Food, Music, Failure, Freedom

“And the most depressing sign about [ Josiah Royce's ] thinking is that he seems perfectly aware how this makes no provision either for immortality or for real freedom, and yet he appears to have no uneasiness under it, but to contemplate this ghastly destiny of ours with a complacency even savoring of self-satisfaction.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Letter to W.T. Harris; Quoted in: James McLachlan, "George Holmes Howison: The Conception of God Debate and the Beginnings of Personal Idealism." The Personalist Forum. Vol. 15, Nr. 1 (1995). p. 6; Cited in Dwayne Tunstall, Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight, Fordham Univ Press, 2009. p. 12
Journals

Thinking, Freedom, Appearance

“The destiny of the spiritual World, and, — since this is the substantial World, while the physical remains subordinate to it, or, in the language of speculation, has no truth as against the spiritual, — the final cause of the World at large, we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit, and ipso facto, the reality of that freedom.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

Truth, World, Reality, Freedom

“There are moments when the Spirit moves among men and the breath of the Lord is abroad upon the waters of our being; there are others when it retires and men are left to act in the strength or the weakness of their own egoism. The first are periods when even a little effort produces great results and changes destiny; the second are spaces of time when much labour goes to the making of a little result. It is true that the latter may prepare the former, may be the little smoke of sacrifice going up to heaven which calls down the rain of God's bounty…. Unhappy is the man or the nation which, when the divine moment arrives, is found sleeping or unprepared to use it, because the lamp has not been kept trimmed for the welcome and the ears are sealed to the call. But thrice woe to them who are strong and ready, yet waste the force or misuse the moment; for them is irreparable loss or a great destruction…. In the hour of God cleanse thy soul of all self-deceit and hypocrisy and vain self-flattering that thou mayst look straight into thy spirit and hear that which summons it. All insincerity of nature, once thy defence against the eye of the Master and the light of the ideal, becomes now a gap in thy armour and invites the blow. Even if thou conquer for the moment, it is the worse for thee, for the blow shall come afterwards and cast thee down in the midst of thy triumph. But being pure cast aside all fear; for the hour is often terrible, a fire and a whirlwind and a tempest, a treading of the winepress of the wrath of God; but he who can stand up in it on the truth of his purpose is he who shall stand; even though he fall, he shall rise again; even though he seem to pass on the wings of the wind, he shall return. Nor let worldly prudence whisper too closely in thy ear; for it is the hour of the unexpected, the incalculable, the immeasurable. Mete not the power of the Breath by thy petty instruments, but trust and go forward…. But most keep thy soul clear, even if for a while, of the clamour of the ego. Then shall a fire march before thee in the night and the storm be thy helper and thy flag shall wave on the highest height of the greatness that was to be conquered.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1918 (The Hour of God)
India's Rebirth

Men, God, Truth, Fear

“Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power.”

Marcel Marceau (1923–2007) French mime and actor

US News & World Report (23 February 1987)

Music, Mood

“We are caught — trapped, some might say — in the web of fate, but we are each just as surely among its multitude of spinners. In our spinning lies our hope; in our spinning lies our destiny.”

Fenton Johnson (1953) American novelist

"Going it alone" (2015)

Fate, Hope

“It was he who first taught the people the then strange truth that Causation was the law of nature and of mind, and unless we looked for the cause of an evil, we might never know the remedy. Every man of sense in Church and State acts on this truth now, but so few knew it in Owen's day that he was accused of unsettling the morality of the world. It was the fertility and newness of his suggestions, as a man of affairs, that gave him renown, and his influence extends to us. This memorial before us would itself grow old, were we to stay to describe all the ideas the world has accepted from Owen. I will name but one more, and that the greatest.
He saw, as no man before him did, that environment is the maker of men. Aristotle, whose praise is in all our Universities, said "Character is Destiny." But how can character be made? The only national way known in Owen's day was by prayer and precept. Owen said there were material means, largely unused, conducive to human improvement. Browning's prayer was — "Make no more giants, God; but elevate the race at once."”

George Holyoake (1817–1906) British secularist, co-operator, and newspaper editor

This was Owen's aim, as far as human means might do it.
Memorial dedication (1902)

Men, God, People, Truth

“He was also extraordinarily sensitive to the ways that imperialists could cloak essentially materialist concerns in the language of morality, mission and destiny. Yet in the process and on more than one occasion he provided evidence to show that the financiers too were prisoners of imperial ideology, that they were as much wedded to causes like 'the civilising mission', as much mislead by hightened imperial rhetoric, as anyone else.”

Peter Cain (1958) figure skater

Source: J. A. Hobson's Imperialism: A Study: A Centennial Retrospective (2002), p. 8

Way, Wedding

“On the 10th day of October, Fiji achieved nationhood in the fullest sense of that term. There was no declaration of independence on her part, since independence was freely given. There was simply a grateful acceptance of the independence that was offered, and a dedication to the tasks that lay ahead and she became the master of her own destiny and assumed her place in the world family of Nations.”

Robert Sidney Foster (1913–2005) British Colonial governor

Address opening Fiji's first parliamentary session as an independent nation (excerpts)

World, Family, Sense, Parting

“Demographics need not be destiny. The West became the best not by out-breeding the undeveloped world… but because of human capital; people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The ‘We Need To Have A Conversation’ Malarkey,” http://thelibertarianalliance.com/2015/03/30/the-we-need-to-have-a-conversation-malarkey/ The Libertarian Alliance, March 30, 2015. <br class="br">2010s, 2015 <br class="br">Variant: Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital — people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.

People, World, Idea, Science

“I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

Quoted in "Howard reasserts right to decide cultural identity," The Age, 20 September 1988.

Thinking, Country

“It is the shared bad faith by which individuals help each other sustain the illusion that they can shirk their spiritual destiny by joining the public.”

Merold Westphal (1940)

Source: Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (1992), p. 49

Faith, Help

“The H-bomb is coming out of my intuitive and inspirationic command, for my spirit speaketh and speaketh psychologically, intuitively, and inspirationally and guides the destinies of the nations of the earth... My Assumption is the opposite of the atomic bomb. Instead of disintegration of matter, we have the integration, the reconstitution of the real and glorious body of the Virgin in the heavens.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from a review of Dali's exhibition at the Carstairs Gallery; 'The New Yorker', 20 December, 1952 p. 24
Dali is referring to one of his exhibited paintings there, very probably 'The Madonna of Port Lligat'
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1951 - 1960

“[From Ernest von Hermanstadt]; Action—action in the sunshine—passion—but little feeling, and less thought: such was meant to be our existence. But we refine—we sadden and we subdue—we call up the hidden and evil spirits of the inner world—we wake from their dark repose those who will madden us. The heart is like the wood on yonder flickering hearth: green and fresh, haunted by a thousand sweet odours, bathed in the warm air, and gladdened by the summer sunshine—so grew it at first upon its native soil. But nature submitteth to art, and man has appointed for it another destiny: it is gathered, and cast into the fire. It seems, then, as if its life had but just begun. A new spirit has crept into the kindled veins—a brilliant light dances around it—it is bright—it is beautiful—and it is consumed! What remains?—A warmth on the atmosphere soon passing away, and a heap of blackened ashes! What more will remain of the heart?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Life, World, Beauty, Art

“[About why he named his daughter True and son Ocean] I want those names to be their destiny, for my daughter to be honest and my son to be expansive. I try to be like a forest, revitalizing and constantly growing. … being called Forest helped me find my identity.”

Forest Whitaker (1961) American actor

To Webster Hall curator Baird Jones, reported in the New York Post (11 December 1999); quoted in “Forest Whitaker,” in Hollywood.com http://www.hollywood.com/celebrities/forest-whitaker-57300206/.

Help, Daughters

“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

The Measures of Man (1959)
1950s

Beauty, Decision, Freedom, Evil

“If human beings were or had to be this or that substance, this or that destiny, no ethical experience would be possible… This does not mean, however, that humans are not, and do not have to be, something, that they are simply consigned to nothingness and therefore can freely decide whether to be or not to be, to adopt or not to adopt this or that destiny (nihilism and decisionism coincide at this point). There is in effect something that humans are and have to be, but this is not an essence nor properly a thing: It is the simple fact of one's own existence as possibility or potentiality.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Source: The Coming Community (1993), Ch. 11 : Ethics

“It is not here necessary to examine in detail the causes which led to the American Revolution. In their immediate occasion they were largely economic. The colonists objected to the navigation laws which interfered with their trade, they denied the power of Parliament to impose taxes which they were obliged to pay, and they therefore resisted the royal governors and the royal forces which were sent to secure obedience to these laws. But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Life, World, Law, Nature

“Man's position in the world is defined by the fact that in every dimension of his being and behavior he finds himself at every moment between two boundaries. This condition appears as the formal structure of our existence, filled always with different contents in life's diverse provinces, activities, and destinies. We feel that the content and value of every hour stands between a higher and a lower; every thought between a wiser and a more foolish; every possession between a more extended and a more limited; every deed between a greater and a lesser measure of meaning, adequacy, and morality.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: The View of Life (1918), p. 1. Opening line of first essay "Life as Transcendence"

Life, World, Behavior, Feeling

“To those who doubt and deny the preponderance of good over evil in human nature; who think the few are made to rule, and the many to serve; who put rank above brotherhood, and race above humanity; who attach more importance to ancient forms than to the living realities of the present; who worship power in whatever hands it may be lodged and by whatever means it may have been obtained; our government is a mountain of sin, and, what is worse, it seems confirmed in its transgressions. One of the latest and most potent European prophets, one who felt himself called upon for a special deliverance concerning us and our destiny as a nation, was the late Thomas Carlyle. He described us as rushing to ruin, and when we may expect to reach the terrible end, our gloomy prophet, enveloped in the fogs of London, has not been pleased to tell us. Warning and advice from any quarter are not to be despised, and especially not from one so eminent as Mr. Carlyle; and yet Americans will find it hard to heed even men like him, while the animus is so apparent, bitter and perverse.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Men, Mountain, Nature, Thinking

“The awful events of September 11, 2001 declared a war we were vaguely aware of, but hadn't really comprehended how near the threat was, and how terrible were the plans of our enemies.
It's a big thing, this war.
It's a fight between a just regard for human dignity and a malevolent force that defiles an honorable religion by disputing God's love for every soul on earth. It's a fight between right and wrong, good and evil.
And should our enemies acquire for their arsenal the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons they seek, this war will become a much bigger thing.
So it is, whether we wished it or not, that we have come to the test of our generation, to our rendezvous with destiny.
And much is expected of us.
We are engaged in a hard struggle against a cruel and determined adversary.
Our enemies have made clear the danger they pose to our security and to the very essence of our culture …liberty.
Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war.
Like all wars, this one will have its ups and downs.
But we must fight. We must.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech at the Republican National Convention (2004)

Love, God, War, Religion

“From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. There shone in his face the serenity of knowledge, of one who is no longer confronted with conflict of desires, who has found salvation, who is in harmony with the stream of events, with the stream of life, full of sympathy and compassion, surrendering himself to the stream, belonging to the unity of all things.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Source: Siddhartha (1922), p. 94

Life, Knowledge, Fight

“On the longest of timescales, over millions of years, the workings of chance defied human intuition. Humans were equipped with a subjective consciousness of risk and improbability suitable for creatures with a lifespan of less than a century or so. Event that came much less frequently than that—such as asteroid impacts—were place, in human minds, in the category not of rare, but of never. But the impacts happened even so, and to a creature with a lifespan of, say, ten million years, would not have seemed so improbable at all.
Given enough time even such unlikely events as ocean crossings from Africa to South America would inevitably occur, over and again, and would shape the destiny of life.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 6 “The Crossing” section IV (p. 185)

Life, Chance, Time

“We stand then for freedom, because we claim the right to develop our own individuality and evolve our own destiny along our own lines, unembarrassed by what Western civilisation has to teach us and unhampered by the institutions which the West has imposed.”

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Undelivered presidential address for the session of Indian Congress held at Ahmedabad in December 1921. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
1921

Freedom

“And then I awoke and yet continued to dream… painting constantly appeared to me as the one and only possible achievement. I thought of my grand old friend Henri Rousseau [French Primitive painter, died in 1910] that Homer in the porter's lodge whose prehistoric dreams have sometimes brought me near the gods. I saluted him in my dream. Near him I saw William Blake, noble emanation of English genius...'Have confidence in your objects,' he said, 'do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Seek this path'... I awoke and found myself in Holland in the midst of boundless world turmoil. But my belief in the final release and absolution of all things, whether they please or torment, was newly strengthened. Peacefully I laid my head among the pillows… to sleep, and dream, again.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

1930s, On my Painting (1938)

God, World, Dreams, Confidence

“Scots have also for these past three hundred been part of a political union - the United Kingdom. Some of you may argue this is three hundred years too long. Others may disagree. But Scotland has played its full part in the Union - meeting our obligations and advancing the common good, without ever losing sight of our distinctive identity and values. And our destiny.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Vision for Scotland in the European Union (December 12, 2007)

Past, Parting

“I would be grateful if I was allowed to work out my own destiny for once,” I said. “For good or ill.”

Michael Moorcock Erekosë

Book 3 “Visions and Revelations” Chapter 4 “The Lady of the Chalice” (p. 416)
Erekosë, Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)

“It was a still afternoon — the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Light

“The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not — will not be forgotten nor neglected…. But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief…. Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to Oliver Downing (15 March 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“I did not hate the author of my misfortunes — truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved — and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me — to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.”

William Godwin book Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams

Caleb Williams (1794)

Hate, Fate, Truth, Justice

“She understood too much. She understood that she had reached her destiny point, that time and the circumstances of her life had conspired to bring her to this place. For one ecstatic moment she was the axis on which the stars revolved.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Bios

Source: Bios (1999), Chapter 15 (p. 140)

Life, Star, Time

“Say, ‘This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.’ That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by someone else, I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creators of your own destiny. All the strength and success you want is within ourselves.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Strong, Suffering, Success

“Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold - the meaning of the pattern. For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential—the imagination.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Justine (1957)

Life, People, Art, Way

“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

The Art Eternal, New York Evening Mail (1918)
1910s

Secret, Dreams, Heart

“All you have to do is anesthetize the masses by telling them they’re an elite, that they’ve got a mission, that they’re making history, that they’re fulfilling their destiny and fighting for a better world — and they swallow it like lambs — even when a guttersnipe says it.”

Hans Hellmut Kirst book The Night of the Generals

The Night of the Generals (1962)

World, History, Fight

“It was gravity which pulled us in and destiny which broke us apart”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Idiot Wind

“Destiny was superb
it spoke among mountains and gray cumuli
like castles in the sky,
swollen with heat,
with rain,
with harvests,
with infinite richness.
…”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Waiting for the End of the World
Source: Caterina Davinio, Aspettando la fine del mondo / Waiting for the End of the World, with parallel English text, English translation by Caterina Davinio and David W. Seaman, Fermenti, Rome 2012, p. 15. </ref>

Mountain

“I shall not rest until, once again, the destinies of our people and our party are joined together again in victory at the next general election Labour in its rightful place in government again.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Philip Webster, "Blair sets sights on Downing Street", The Times, 22 July 1994.
Speech on being elected Leader of the Labour Party, 21 July 1994.
1990s

People, Victory

“You’ve been a father to me.
Your 1960’s speak.
Gives me comatose joy like re-run TV.
While the mountainside was shining.
Wild colors of my destiny”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Cape Cañaveral
Conor Oberst (2008)

Color, Joy

Quotes about destiny page 4

Quotes about destiny
page 4