Joseph Brodsky Quotes

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

Our acts our angels are, for good or ill, our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

Maybe our mistakes are what make our fate.

Do yourself a favor. Don't ever say to me, 'Everything happens for a reason.'

The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.

I think everything is pretty well preordained - even your mistakes.

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please …. All history is the record of man’s signal failure to thwart his destiny.

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.

I have nothing to do with anything that happens to me.

Fatalism is a false premise. What will be is not necessarily what must be.

The willing, destiny guides them; the unwilling, destiny drags them.

I come down on the side of free will but I have sympathy for those who believe in fate because there is something about life which we feel we have no control over.

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.

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

Your destiny is shaped by choice, never by chance. Beware the decisions you make, no matter how small, for they will be your salvation...or your death.

Every individual acts and suffers in accordance with his peculiar teleology, which has all the inevitability of fate, so long as he does not understand it.

There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learned to separate them.

Cease to think that the decrees of the gods can be changed by prayers.

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

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

You can't even kill yourself if it isn't your time to go. People have no control whatsoever over what happens to them, and they are beginning to realize this. The future lies in the time of living. Your doing something will get you into tomorrow, if you want to call it tomorrow. If you want to make those distinctions at all.

I believe in karma.

Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.