Chrysippus Quotes

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

Fate is the endless chain of causation, whereby things are; the reason or formula by which the world goes on.

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.

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.

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

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?

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

Men do not shape destiny, Destiny produces the man for the hour.

I think everything is pretty well preordained - even your mistakes.

In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

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

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?

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.

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.

I believe in fate.

Fate and history have a similar feeling. They are weird mirrors to each other.

Fate is a misplaced retreat. Many people rationalize an unexplained event as fate and shrug their shoulders when it occurs. But that is not what fate is. The world operates as a series of circles that are invisible, for they extend to the upper air. Fate is where these circles cut to earth. Since we cannot see them, do not know their content, and have no sense of their width, it is impossible to predict when these cuts will slice into our reality. When this happens, we call it fate. Fate is not a chance event but one that is inevitable, we are simply blind to its nature and time.

All things are in fate, yet all things are not decreed by fate.

There is no luck in life, everything happens for a reason. Every little thing that you do... leads up to a bigger thing. And that's the story of my life.

The notion of fate and destiny is a very Greek concept. Working in the theater you do think a lot about that, because as a storyteller you do think, 'At what point was this always going to happen and what part have I got a hand in being able to change things?'

I do not believe such a quality as chance exists. Every incident that happens must be a link in a chain.

There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity.