Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

I accept chaos, I’m not sure whether it accepts me.

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‚Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.‘

Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven.

The woman that deliberates is lost.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

What is this world that is hastening me toward I know not what, viewing me with contempt?

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

Younger people have greatest fears. Why is that? Because they don’t know the plot. They don’t know their own individual plot… they don’t know what’s going to happen to them.

Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

What prudent merchant will hazard his fortunes in any new branch of commerce when he knows not that his plans may be rendered unlawful before they can be executed?

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

Control your own destiny! Control your own destiny!

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.

Know that as a Christian, your destiny is to be Christlike in all of your ways.

Life’s short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

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.

The will is a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills; Nor can it choose its rider… the riders contend for its possession.

There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear unmingled with hope.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

U2’s best work has always been when we didn’t know what we’re doing.

Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power.

The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch.

I bear a charmed life.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

Scientific views end in awe and mystery, lost at the edge in uncertainty, but they appear to be so deep and so impressive that the theory that it is all arranged as a stage for God to watch man’s struggle for good and evil seems inadequate.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

I want to marry Arline because I love her – which means I want to take care of her. That is all there is to it. I want to take care of her. I am anxious for the responsibilities and uncertainties of taking care of the girl I love.

A man’s character is his fate.

From the time I was a kid, I always knew something was going to happen to me. Didn’t know exactly what.

I’m not somebody that thinks about destiny and fate, but I don’t walk away from it when something unfolds.

Part of the reason there’s an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you’re in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let’s say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

What’s coming will come and we’ll just have to meet it when it does.

Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

I always wonder when it was that I was embraced.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.