Daniel Dennett Quotes

I have always believed that all things depended upon Fortune, and nothing upon ourselves.

We like to believe we are in control of our destinies, even though we never are and we never have been.

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.

Necessity and chance Approach not me, and what I will is fate.

You speak of destiny as if it was fixed.

When we think about the present, we veer wildly between the belief in chance and the evidence in favour of determinism. When we think about the past, however, it seems obvious that everything happened in the way that it was intended.

You're not always able to choose.

I think some things are just meant to happen; you can't change your fate. Maybe we have a small amount of control.

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.

Events are not a matter of chance.

I have never believed that things happen by themselves.

Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned.

We're living under the illusion that we have the power to determine what to do with it.

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

Anything that can happen, will happen.

Fate determines many things, no matter how we struggle.

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

If the world is turning, even the church can’t stop it; if it isn’t turning, nobody can go out and make it turn.

A belief in the purposeful complexity of Fate is always more comforting than random, straightforward facts

Many events in our lives are the result of things beyond our control. While it is comforting to think, 'I'm in charge,' in truth, most changes effected by individuals are very limited in scope.

We can control how we run, and that's about it.

I used to very politely say that if there is free will then it's in all sorts of boring places, like whether you're going to pick up this or that fork as you begin your meal. There really is none: It's all biology.

I realized that there are no certainties in life. You can't manipulate fate.

The Fates guide those who will and drag those who won't!