Epictetus Quotes

I think people have some control over what they want; there's a relationship - maybe not automatic - between what you want and get.

If you own this story you get to write the ending.

Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, property, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.

This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.

You shape your own destiny.

Fate is for losers.

We are exactly where we have chosen to be.

We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

Your one certainty in life, your power as a human being, is that you have a choice in every situation about what you do next and about how you take what has happened to you.

I'm not in charge of my life.

Whatever can be done in this world will be done. The only question is whether it will be done by you or to you.

Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing.

Liberty is that principle of spontaneity, or self-determination, which constitutes us as agents, or which gives us a command over our actions, rendering them properly ours, and not effects of the operation of any foreign cause

We try to separate the world into the stuff we can control and the stuff we can't.

The word 'fate' doesn't really mean much to me in some ways. I think we make our own.

What I say is the only thing I can control.

We create our own destiny.

People make their own destinies.

The future is in our hands; we are masters of our own destiny.

You are not here to try to get the world to be just as you want it. You are here to create the world around you that you choose.

You might be locked in a world not of your own making, her eyes said, but you still have a claim on how it is shaped. You still have responsibilities.

We are not forced into unpleasant activities. We either allow them to come about or we encourage them to come about.

You have agency, and you are free to choose. But there is actually no free agency. Agency has its price. You have to pay the consequences of your choices.

Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.

Our lives are the results of our choices. To blame and accuse other people, the environment, or other extrinsic factors is to choose to empower those things to control us.