Looking for the original author of the quotation "Things do not merely
happen, they are made to happen."  It has been attributed to John F.
Kennedy but I wrote it down in my diary in the early 1940s so I think
it was either Thoreau or Franklin Roosevelt.  Thank you for your help.

Here a similar quote is attributed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

"To those who believe that a chaotic world is a more plausible
explanation for wierd [sic] happenings, I can only point to the
following remark by F.D.R. before the first world war: 'Things in
politics do not just happen; they are made to happen...I will be
Secretary of the Navy, governor of New York, and president, in that
order'.
And he was."

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.sys.amiga.misc/msg/39533ca88e86b980?dmode=source

Thank you. I'll have to accept that the quote I copied so long ago
could be an edited version of FDR's statement.  However, in that my
family were staunch Republicans, I am still suspicious that I found it
somewhere in Thoreau.  Perhaps FDR read it first there.  I'm sure John
F. Kennedy was a student of FDR so that would explain why researchers
have wrongly attributed it to him.  The exact words I wrote were: 
"Things do not merely happen, they are made to happen."  Sounds more
like a Thoreau or Emerson wording to me!  Thanks, again.