#predestination

There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent “what if” scenarios--what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?--because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency. ↗

— Louis Menand

#decisions #fate #history #individuals #predestination

You believe in Destiny, don't you?" "Yes," said Leah quietly. "Then you have to believe that things happen for a reason, and even if you change something. Destiny will find a way to fulfill her needs." - Jasmine ↗

— Jacquelyn Frank

#predestination #predetermination #change

The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices. ↗

— Clarice Lispector

#fate #free #predestination #will #freedom

Unbeliever is he who follows predestination even if he be Muslim, Faithful is he, if he himself is the Divine Destiny. ↗

— Muhammad Iqbal

#divine #even #faithful #follows #himself

Plants and minerals are bound to predestination. The faithful is only bound to the Divine orders. ↗

— Muhammad Iqbal

#divine #faithful #minerals #only #orders

If a dream can tell the future it can also thwart that future. For God will not permit that we shall know what is to come. He is bound to no one that the world unfold just so upon its course and those who by some sorcery or by some dream might come to pierce the veil that lies so darkly over all that is before them may serve by just that vision to cause that God should wrench the world from its heading and set it upon another course altogether and then where stands the sorcerer? Where the dreamer and his dream? ↗

— Cormac McCarthy

#fate #predestination #prophecy #sorcery #dreams

I knew at an early age I wanted to act. Acting was always easy for me. I don't believe in predestination, but I do believe that once you get where ever it is you are going, that is where you were going to be. ↗

— Morgan Freeman

#acting #age #always #believe #early

I don't believe in predestination, even though I was raised a Presbyterian. ↗

— Shelley Long

#even #i #i was raised #predestination #presbyterian

Women have a predestination to suffering. ↗

— Bela Lugosi

#predestination #suffering

I believe that nothing happens apart from divine determination and decree. We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination - the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life. ↗

— Charles Spurgeon

#apart #believe #certain #decree #determination