Hannah Arendt Quotes

I hate the word "inevitable" because I feel like things don't have to be the way they are.

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

Our history is not our destiny.

If the world wants you, it's gonna keep on coming till it gets you. And who am I that can fix it? Who am I that can change this if the world wants it so badly? Who am I to stop the end of the world if it keeps on coming?

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

Circumstance - which moves by laws of its own, regardless of parties and policies, and whose decrees are final and must be obeyed by all - and will be

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the inevitable was.

There are two conflicting philosophies that I love: "Everything happens for a reason," as well as "you can change everything that you have control over."

Fate decides until challenged by the fated

Everyone has a choice. (Kiara) No, princess, they don’t. Choices aren’t always up to us. Life and circumstances can shred even the stoutest soul. No matter how pure and untainted you think you are, I promise you that you, too, can be shoved into the darkness, just like we were. (Syn)

Fortune's wheel takes you very high and then throws you very low, and there is nothing you can do but face the turn of it with courage.

Which brings me to my conclusion upon Free Will and Predestination, namely - let the reader mark it - that they are identical.

As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

Everything is chance, or nothing is chance. If I believed the first, I would be unable to live on, but I am not yet fully convinced of the second.

The doctrine of Necessity or Destiny is the doctrine of Toleration.

Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast endless net. Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in the maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life.

Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today

Life is a compromise between fate and free will.

Our fate is matched by the total freedom we have to react to our fate. It is as if we were dealt a hand of card. Once we have them, we are free to play them as we choose.

And what do you wish?' he said at last. 'That what should be shall be,' she answered.

though fortune's wheel is generally on the turn, sometimes when it gets into the mud, it sticks there.

We seal our fate with the choices we make.

Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.

I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they're right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.

Men believe death's elections to be a thing inscrutable yet every act invites the act which follows and to the extent that men put one foot before the other they are accomplices in their own deaths as in all such facts of destiny.