This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If, as Heraclitus said, “A man’s character is his fate” – that is, if our fate is largely determined by the habitual tendencies of our repetition compulsion-personality – then the power of consciousness is that it allows us to change impulses, we have what Kierkegaard called “the possibility of possibility”: the possibility of having a free choice and the moral responsibility that comes with it. In that sense, the fear of consciousness is ultimately the fear of moral responsibility, because if we own our anxiety, shame, and guilt, and allow ourselves to have full consciousness of emotions that motivate our behavior, then we will inevitably recognize the full weight of our responsibility for that behavior." - Elio Frattaroli
"Fate is what we are given. Destiny is what we make of what is given to us. We cannot choose our fate but we can shape our destiny. And in that choice lies all the difference… We are not only shaped by our environment; we shape it. We are not only the creatures of circumstance; we are also the creators of circumstance." - Sidney Greenberg
"The most fateful choices are made in tragic loneliness. In the valley of decision, we stand alone, accompanied by our haunting fears and our stubborn hopes, by dread despair or gritty faith. Yet, though we appear to stand solitary, in truth we are accompanied by the tall and brave spirits who have stood where we stand and who, when torn between “No” and “Yes” to life and its infinite possibilities; by those who have had the wisdom to focus not on what they had lost but on what they had left; by those who understood that fate is what life gives us and that destiny is what we do with what’s given; and by those who, therefore, grasped the liberating truth that while we have no control over our fate, we do have an astonishing amount of control over our destiny." - Sidney Greenberg
"Among the humble and great alike, those who achieve success do so not because fate and circumstance are especially kind to them. Often the reverse is true. They succeed because they do not whine over their fate but take whatever has been given to them and go on to make the most of their best." - Sidney Greenberg
"When good befalls a man he calls it Providence, when evil Fate." - Knut Hamsun
"The future must have as its basis the consciousness of sanctity in existence – in common things, in the events of human life, in the gradually comprehended interlocking whole revealed to the human desire for knowledge, n the benedictions of beauty and love, in the catharsis, the sacred purging, of the moral drama in which character is pitted against fate and even deepest tragedy may uplift the mind." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
"The doctor should not strive to heal at all costs. One has to be exceedingly careful not to impose one’s own will and conviction on the patient... Sometimes it is really a question whether you are allowed to rescue a man from the fate he must undergo for the sake of his further development." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"The wake of Moses, of Buddha, of Confucius, of Lao Tse, of Christ, probably exert a greater influence over humanity today than when these men were pondering over its fate and happiness. No man ever disappears completely if he strives to do good and expects no reward outside of the joy of having contributed to the progress of mankind." - Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
"The sense of sharing a common fate, which is the basis of enduring comradeship and love, is also the firmest foundation for a free society." - Henry Alonso Meyers
"Within the child lies the fate of the future." - Maria Montessori
"Behind all faith... lies the plain fact that man, as a creature of free will, cannot shirk the ultimate responsibility for his own fate." - Paul Elmer More
"According to the Buddha the will is free, effort is worth while, man makes his own fate, deeds have consequences, knowledge is possible, the body is not the real self, and death is not its end." - James Bisset Pratt
"Religion is an intercourse, a conscious and voluntary relation, entered into by a soul in distress with the mysterious power upon which it feels itself to depend, and upon which its fate is contingent." - Louis Auguste Sabatier
"The glories of our blood and state are shadows, not substantial things; there is no armor against fate; death lays his icy hand on kings, sceptre and crown must tumble down, and in the dust be equal made with the poor crooked scythe and spade." - James Shirley
"There is no fate save that which we allow ourselves allow." - Baird T. Spalding
"Where love, trust, mutual aid, equality, and empathy are not linked, the boot, whip, warring, modern inquisitors, and their epigones will supply a rhetoric that accepts humanity's fate as tragic while doing everything to perpetuate that tragedy." - Marcus G. Raskin
"To be brave in misfortune is to be worthy of manhood; to be wise in misfortune is to conquer fate." - Agnes Repplier
"The importance of an individual thinker owes something to chance. For it depends upon the fate of his ideas in the minds of his successors." - Alfred North Whitehead
"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." - Aristotle NULL
"Though sixteen civilizations may have perished already to our knowledge, and nine others may be now at the point of death, we - the twenty-sixty - are not compelled to submit the riddle of our fate to the blind arbitrament of statistics. The divine spark of creative power is still alive in us, and, if we have the grace to kindle it into flame, then the stars in their courses cannot defeat our efforts to attain the goal of human endeavor." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
"Of all “evils” death is the most feared although it is the fate of all creatures. It is so natural that reason tells us it must be good. Death is not lifelessness, but life in motion. Our essential being cannot die because it was never born. Only its representations appear and disappear in the chronological sequences we call incarnations. If death is the prelude to life in other forms it ceases to be “evil” but becomes the means for releasing consciousness is that it may express itself in other and more diverse fields." - Arthur W Osborn
"A man’s fate is his own temper; and according to that will be his opinion as to the particular manner in which the course of events is regulated. A consistent man believes in destiny, an capricious man in chance." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"We make our fortunes and we call them fate." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Every part of this country is sacred to my people... Even the rocks that seem to lie dumb as they swelter in the sun of past events connected with the fate of my people, and the very dust under your feet responds more lovingly to our footsteps than to yours, because it is the ashes of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch, for the soil is rich with the life of our kindred." - Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
"Everywhere man blames nature and fate, yet his fate is mostly but the echo of his character and passions, his mistakes and weaknesses." - Democritus NULL
"Life is a compromise between fate and free will." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"One ship drives east, and another west with the self-same winds that blow: `tis the set of the sails and not the gales, which decides the way we go. Like the winds of the sea are the ways of fate, as they voyage along through life; “tis the will of the soul that decides the goal, and not the calm or the strife." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"A strict belief, fate is the worst kind of slavery; on the other hand there is comfort in the thought that God will be moved by our prayers." - Epicurus NULL
"The fate of America cannot depend on any one man. The greatness of American is grounded in principles and not on any single personality." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"The fate of people depends much more on their character than on their intelligence." - Gustave Le Bon
"One of the paradoxical lessons of the nuclear age is that at the moment when we are acquiring an unparalleled command over nature, we are forced to realize as never before that the problems of survival will have to be solved above all in the minds of men. In this task the fate of the mammoth and the dinosaur may serve as a warning that brute strength does not always supply the mechanism in the struggle for survival." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"History is often cruel, and rarely logical, and yet the wisest of realists are those who recognize that fate can indeed be shaped by human faith and courage." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that is what determines, or rather, indicates, his fate." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Every human being is the artificer of his own fate… Events, circumstances, etc., have their origin in ourselves. They spring from seeds which we have sown." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau