Chinua Achebe Quotes

Chance, choice, and consequence are fundamental parts of existence and perfect fodder for a horror story - or any story, for that matter, that asks, 'How do you live through this? How does anyone live through this?'

We're on some path that's set since we're born, but I still believe we can change some things. So I believe in my faith, but I still don't believe in my fate.

I believe that destiny has a big role to play in everyone's life.

All conditioning aims at that: making people like their inescapable social destiny.

That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God.

Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say no. I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible.

We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.

A man does not always choose what his guardian angel intends.

Thus is our treaty written; thus is agreement made. Thought is the arrow of time; memory never fades. What was asked is given; the price is paid.

Might have a couple of kinks to work through," Hale admitted then reached for her hand. As soon as he touched her, Kat knew there was no such thing as curses. People make and break their own fortunes--they are the masters of their own fate. And right then Kat wouldn't have changed a thing.

Fate operates when people give up

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

Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason.

Everything that happens, happens of necessity.

It has been said that the gate of history turns on small hinges, and so do people's lives. The choices we make determine our destiny.

Destiny is important, see, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around.

We live out our lives as we are meant to live them-with some choice, with some chance, but mostly as a result of the persons we are.

Archer had always been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a small part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency to have things happen to them.

The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin.

All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunegonde, if you hadn't been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn't traveled across America on foot, if you hadn't given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn't lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn't be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios. - That is very well put, said Candide, but we must cultivate our garden.

It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris.

The Fates guide those who go willingly. Those who do not, they drag.

What people commonly call Fate is, as a general rule, nothing but their own stupid and foolish conduct.

Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.