Fate Quotations

Fate is a concept involving Time and circumstances, related to those about Destiny, both usually being associated with ideas of predestination, fatalism, or inevitable predetermination, but not necessarily so.

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Wyrd bið ful aræd.
- Fate remains wholly inexorable.
  - Anonymous 10th century author of The Wanderer

Fate has a way of circling back on a man, and taking him by surprise. A man sees things differently at different times in his life. This town didn't seem the same now that he was older.
- "Edward Bloom" in Big Fish (screenplay by John August, based on Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions (1998) by Daniel Wallace

Don't let them tell us stories. Don't let them say of the man sentenced to death "He is going to pay his debt to society," but: "They are going to cut off his head." It looks like nothing. But it does make a little difference. And then there are people who prefer to look their fate in the eye.
- Albert Camus, "Entre oui et non" in L'Envers et l'endroit (1937), translated as "Between Yes and No", in World Review magazine (March 1950), also quoted in The Artist and Political Vision (1982) by Benjamin R. Barber and Michael J. Gargas McGrath

Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread,
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.
- William Cowper, in "A Fable" (or "The Raven"), line 36

Fate chooses our relatives, we choose our friends.
- Jacques Delille, in Malheur at Pitié, canto I (1803)

How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.
- Wilhelm von Humboldt, as quoted in International Proverbs (2000) by Luzano Pancho Canlas

Fate is Never Final.
- Prince of Persia: Warrior Within

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.
- Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural address (20 January 1981)

Fool, don't you know you cannot change your fate.
- "Shadee" in Prince of Persia

For whatever reasons, Ray, call it . . . fate, call it luck, call it karma. I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe that we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.
- "Dr. Peter Venkman" in Ghostbusters (1984) written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.

Throughout human history, we have been dependent on machines to survive. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.
- Morpheus in The Matrix by the Wachowski brothers

There is no fate but what we make.
- John Connor in Terminator Salvation, written by John Brancato and Michael Ferris