George Orwell Quotes

Circumstances beyond my individual control.

At first I was a bit indignant about it, and then I realised, 'No, that's what people want, so that's what is given.' But it's not in your control. It's just what happens to you, and that's what's frightening.

I long ago made up my mind that if anybody wants to kill me, they could do it.

I just don't see the point in sitting around hollering the blues over things you have no control over. It's all in God's hands.

I'm not a fatalist; even if I were, what could I do about it?

Fate rules. You follow the steps and you plan and you work. Then fate slips in laughing and makes fools of us. Sometimes we can trick it or out guess it but most often its already written. For some its written in blood. That doesn't mean we stop, but it does mean we can't comfort ourselves with blame. It's easier to take the blame than to admit there was nothing you could do to stop whatever happened.

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

Man is better without knowledge of things to come, for what is to be will be, and man can neither avert nor hasten. It is better to go in the dark when the road must pass a lion and there is no other road.

I have no will, unless it be the will never to decide. I have been so overwhelmed by the many storms that have broken over my head, that I am become passive in the hands of the Almighty, like a sparrow in the talons of an eagle. I live, because it is not ordained for me to die.

If it is our destiny to be hit by the train, we will be hit by the train. The only thing we can change is how the train turns us into a hamburger.

Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!

Nothing can be repaired or advanced but only accepted

Often the prudent, far from making their destinies, succumb to them. -Francois

For he will do As he do do And there's no doing anything about it!

Failures . . . believe that their lives are shaped by circumstances ... by things that happen to them ... by exterior forces.

You can't do anything about the past. And you don't know what the future is.

It wasn't his, it wasn't my fault, we both had nothing except patience, but Death has none. I saw him come (how meanly!) and I watched him as he took and took: none of it I could claim as mine.

Being in the military just lets you know how helpless you are. You could train forever but you're still at the mercy of someone in the Pentagon, or somebody in the rear moving you around like a chess piece.

And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.

I am afraid we are little better than straws upon the water; we may flatter ourselves that we swim, when the current carries us along.

If a problem is insoluble, it is Necessity. Leave it alone.

Enjoy yourself because you can't change anything anyway

Fortunately, we are not in control.

...the plan will happen in spite of us, not because of us.

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate