Richard Taylor was an American philosopher born in 1919. He went to Brown University to get a Ph.D., he then later taught at Brown, Columbia and the University of Rochester. His most popular work was Metaphysics which he wrote and published in 1963. He has also written many other philosophical works, though they failed to gain the popularity that Metaphysics did, though still important in their own right and also used as subjects in numerous philosophical studies. In 2003, he died due to incurable cancer. He is credited with the quote “All men are fatalists as they look back on things.” Which means that all people are fatalists, that meaning they believe in fate and that everything happens for a reason, basically along the lines of thinking that had something not have happened long ago than a specific something would not have happened now.
Now personally, I can see where this idea comes from; while I don't fully believe the idea of a predetermined fate, I can see how when someone looks back into their past or into the world's past they might start to believe in the idea of fate because so much had to have happened in order to for us to be in the exact situation where we are now. Even small changes are capable of drastically changing history and thus changing the world we are in today. A fatalist would most likely believe that those events happened for a reason, as in it was their fate to occur in such a way so that the world would be able to be like it is now.
"Richard Taylor (Philosopher)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Web. 26 Oct. 2015. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Taylor_(philosopher)>.
Madigan, Tim. "Richard Taylor."Richard Taylor. Philosophy Now, Oct. 2015. Web. 26 Oct. 2015. <https://philosophynow.org/issues/40/Richard_Taylor>.