There are no inevitabilities in history

If man--if each one of us--abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each one of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence…

— Jacques Ellul

“The imposition of the inevitability--that the everyday must unfold in particular ways and that all bodies should behave similarly--creates parity among actors, in this…

— Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer

All revolutions are the sheerest fantasy until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities.

— David Mitchell

“It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Genes are not about inevitabilities; they're about potentials and vulnerabilities.

— Robert Sapolsky

“I think about the Old Ones, that they have a past but no history. I think about the inevitability of death, and whether it’s…

— Franny Billingsley

“We allowed ourselves to accept the politics of inevitability, the sense that history could move in only one direction: toward liberal democracy...We imbibed the…

— Timothy Snyder

“Both of these positions, inevitability and eternity, are antihistorical. The only thing that stands between them is history itself. History allows us to see…

— Timothy Snyder

Liberalism, on the other hand, regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situations, in which there is no…

— Morris Raphael Cohen

I think my way of showing violence is unique from that of other filmmakers, in that when I show it, it hurts. It happens…

— Takeshi Kitano

“In that moment I’m able to accept the inevitability of how I feel, though not with joy. I need to talk to someone. I…

— Veronica Roth

There is the extreme of hopelessness and the inevitability of doom, a deep despair that comes from the sense that our industrial, consuming society…

— Sam Keen

“Part of the apparently conventional nature of our relationships is the threat of separation and death. This body dies. That body dies. We can…

— Adi Da Samraj

“Thus, for our purposes, genes aren’t about inevitability. Instead they’re about context-dependent tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities. All embedded in the fabric of the…

— Robert M. Sapolsky

He decided then that he would love her forever no matter what came to pass. It was not so much a matter of deciding…

— David Guterson