Destiny Quote by William Irwin Thompson

“If you do not create your destiny, you will have your fate inflicted upon you.”

William Irwin Thompson

About This Quote

Source Book: The Time of the Hero, 1975

Creating destiny requires proactive choices; otherwise fate imposes itself.

In simple terms: Shape your future actively.

Key Takeaway

Take deliberate actions to steer life.

Themes

agency destiny choice

Mood

empowering thoughtful

Type

philosophical motivational

When to use this quote

career decisions
personal goals
relationship building

Key Concepts

self‑determination future planning

Questions to Reflect On

What choices define your path?
How to balance planning with flexibility?

A Different Perspective

External forces can still affect outcomes.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.4 out of 5 (6 ratings)

More by William Irwin Thompson

The planets are not hunks of stuff out there but nodes of vibration that resonate in multiple dimensions that enfold themselves into one another…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

In the domain of cops and robbers, an interdiction serves to structure a black market and a shadow economy.

William Irwin Thompson

Image

Ideologies do not map the complete living processes of a World.

William Irwin Thompson

Image

That shoreline where the island of knowing meets the unfathomable sea of our own being is the landscape of myth.

William Irwin Thompson

Image

What is at the higher levels of meaning consciousness is like a hyperspace in which each point is equidistant from the other and where…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

Idealistic reformers are dangerous because their idealism has no roots in love, but is simply a hysterical and unbalanced rage for order amidst their…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

Like a shadow that does not permit us to jump over it, but moves with us to maintain its proper distance, pollution is nature's…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

The more chaos there is, the more science holds on to abstract systems of control, and the more chaos is engendered.

William Irwin Thompson

Image

A World is not an ideology nor a scientific institution, nor is it even a system of ideologies; rather, it is a structure of…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

Catastrophes are often stimulated by the failure to feel the emergence of a domain, and so what cannot be felt in the imagination is…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

But the time has come; the revelation has already occurred, and the guardian seers have seen the lightning strike the darkness we call reality.…

William Irwin Thompson

Image

I don't think anyone now really understands the planetisation of mankind, really understands the new world order emerging through all this period of strain…

William Irwin Thompson