The Tragedy of Julius Caesar · Act I, Scene II
William Shakespeare
Shakespeare taps into a debate as old as storytelling: fate versus free will. Cassius challenges the notion that destiny alone shapes our lives, arguing instead for personal accountability. In Elizabethan England, astrology was taken seriously, and the stars were thought to govern human affairs. Cassius's line argues against this fatalism, urging Brutus—and us—not to surrender agency to fate's whims.