Thomas Huxley Quotes

Fate then is that necessity by which a certain result will surely be brought to pass according to the natural course of events however we may vary the particular circumstances which precede the event.

I do not believe anything comes by chance. I regard the present as the necessary child of a necessary past.

I don't believe in luck. I believe everything happens for a reason.

I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

God has created a logical universe of cause and effect. He who repudiates causality actually repudiates reason.

Fate is a sempiternal and unchangeable series and chain of things, rolling and unraveling itself through eternal sequences of cause and effect, of which it is composed and compounded.

If something were brought about without an antecedent cause, it would be untrue that all things come about through fate. But if it is plausible that all events have an antecedent cause, what ground can be offered for not conceding that all things come about through fate?

Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under the fire of thought; for causes which are unpenetrated.

There are no accidents in my philosophy. Every effect must have its cause. The past is the cause of the present, and the present will be the cause of the future. All these are links in the endless chain stretching from the finite to the infinite.

Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

In the end, nature is inexorable: it has no reason to hurry and, sooner or later, it takes what belongs to it. Unconsciously and inflexibly obedient to its own laws, it doesn't know art, just as it doesn't know freedom, just as it doesn't know goodness.

Sometimes, what you do you have no control over because it's predestined. It's gonna happen in spite of you. There's nothing you can do about it.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

I wonder whether being a scientist's daughter makes you so conflicted about free will and fate.

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.

Events are not a matter of chance.

Fate will find a way.

Destiny waits alike for the free man as well as for him enslaved by another's might.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect is already in the cause.

The march of events rules and overrules human action.

In the fabric of human events, one thing leads to another. Every mistake is in a sense the product of all the mistakes that have gone before it, from which fact it derives a sort of cosmic forgiveness; and at the same time every mistake is in a sense the determinant of all the mistakes of the future, from which it derives a sort of cosmic unforgivableness.

I am the very slave of circumstance

Although it is true that by fate all things are forced and linked by a necessary and dominant reason, nevertheless the character of our minds is subject to fate in a manner corresponding to their nature and quality.

Intellectually, I believe there's no free will.