Fate and Destiny in History

FATE IN MYTHOLOGY
The Moirae were supposed to appear three nights after a child's birth to determine the course of its life. The Greeks variously claimed that they were the daughters of Zeus and the Titaness Themis (the "Institutor") or of primordial beings like Nyx, the Night, Chaos or Ananke, Necessity.

The Moirae, as depicted in an 16th century tapestry
In earlier times, the Moirae were represented as only a few - perhaps only one - individual goddess. Homer's Iliad speaks generally of the Moera, who spins the thread of life for men at their birth (xxiv.209), Moera Krataia "strong Moira" (xvi.334) or of several Moerae (xxiv.49). In the Odyssey (vii.197) there is a reference to the Klôthes, or Spinners. At Delphi, only the Fates of Birth and Death were revered.[3] In Athens, Aphrodite, who had an earlier, pre-Olympic existence, was called Aphrodite Urania the 'eldest of the Fates' according to Pausanias (x.24.4).
DESTINY
Destiny may be envisaged as fore-ordained by the Divine (for example, the Protestant concept of predestination) or by human will (for example, the American concept of Manifest Destiny).
A sense of destiny in its oldest human sense is in the soldier's fatalistic image of the "bullet that has your name on it" or the moment when your number "comes up," or a romance that teach the futility of trying to outmaneuver an inexorable fate that has been correctly predicted.
Destiny may be seen as a fixed sequence of events that is inevitable and unchangeable, or that individuals choose their own destiny by choosing different paths throughout their life.

DESTINY VS. FATE
Although the words are used interchangeably in many cases, fate and destiny can be distinguished. Modern usage defines fate as a power or agency that predetermines and orders the course of events. Fate defines events as ordered or "inevitable". Fate is used in regard to the finality of events as they have worked themselves out; and that same finality projected into the future to become the inevitability of events as they will work themselves out is Destiny. In classical and Eureopean mythology, there are three goddessess dispensing fate known as Moirae in Greek mythology, Parcae in Roman mythology, and Norns in Norse mythology, who determinted the events of the world. One word derivative of "fate" is "fatality" another "fatalism". Fate implies no choice, and ends with a death. Fate is an outcome determined by an outside agency acting upon a person or entity; but with destiny the entity is participating in achieving an outcome that is directly related to itself. Participation happens wilfully.
Used in the past tense, "destiny" and "fate" are both more interchangeable, both imply "one's lot" or fortunes, and includes the sum of events leading up to a currently achieved outcome (e.g. "it was her destiny to be leader" and "it was her fate to be leader").

Quotes About Fate and Destiny

Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821 - 1881), "The Brothers Karamazov"

Man is his own star and the soul that can render an honest and perfect man commands all light, all influence, all fate.
John Fletcher (1579 - 1625), 1647

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939

It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.
Jean Nidetch

To accomplish our destiny it is not enough to merely guard prudently against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us.
Alexis Carrel (1873 - 1944)

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963), speech at The American University, Washington, D.C.,
June 10, 1963

Crime and Punishment and the Big Question

Raskolnikov's actions in Crime and Punishment convey the idea that indeed a person's future is determined by their own decisions. It was Raskolnikov himself that decided to kill Alyona and Lizaveta at the beginning of the novel and then to confess to the crime at the end. There was not not another person or other power forcing Raskolnikov to do either of these besides perhaps, his sickness and conscience. There does not seem to be any divine intervention in the novel. However, it only seems appropriate that Raskolnikov meet somebody like Sonia, a christ like figure who is one of the main reasons Rask. finally decides to confess. This brings up the question of whether people can be placed in our lives as a part of our fate. Instead of certain events being destined to happen are there instead certain people who we are meant to have in our lives because they influence us in one way or another.