Chrysippus Quotes

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.

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

Events are not a matter of chance.

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.

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

Of causes, some are complete and primary, others auxiliary and proximate. Hence, when we say that all things come about through fate by antecedent causes, we do not mean this to be understood as 'by complete and primary causes,' but 'by auxiliary and proximate causes.'

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Intellectually, I believe there's no free will.

I believe in fate.

There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.

Every event has had its cause, and nothing, not the least wind that blows, is accident or causeless.

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

Whatever is, is in its causes just.

Nothing happens by chance, my friend... No such thing as luck.

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.

In a universe governed by God there are no chance events. Indeed, there is no such thing as chance. Chance does not exist. It is merely a word we use to describe mathematical possibilities. But chance itself has no power because it has no being. Chance is not an entity that can influence reality. Chance is not a thing. It is nothing.

Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.