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About this quote

What does it mean?
Borges states the future is fixed but may not happen, suggesting divine intervention in uncertain outcomes.
In plain terms
Future is set but might not occur due to God.
What can you take from it?
Determinism leaves room for mystery.

Where it applies

  • philosophy
  • storytelling
  • existential thought

Putting it to work

  • accept fixed plans
  • look for gaps

Questions to consider

  • Is the future written?
  • Who controls the gaps?

Another view

Future outcomes may be random not divine.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

  1. Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of …

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  2. To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.

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  3. A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his…

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