Random Fortune Generator

The Random Fortune Generator is a fortune cookie without the cookie. Press the button and you get one message from a list of 75 fortunes of the kind that come folded inside the cookie at the end of a takeout meal: "A dream you have will come true," "The fortune you seek is in another cookie," "You will be hungry again in one hour." It is for people who want the small, silly ritual of cracking open a fortune without ordering food, and for anyone who needs a one-line message for a card, a slide or a group chat.

How it works

There is nothing to fill in. Each press shuffles the list and shows the first fortune on a single card. Press again for another. Because it is a plain shuffle, you can get the same fortune twice in a row now and then, the same way you sometimes get the same one from two cookies in one bag. There are no categories, no love or career filters, and it never asks for your name, birthday or star sign. Anything that claims to tell your future from those details is guessing anyway; this one just doesn't pretend.

What kind of fortunes are in the list

We kept the mix close to what actually shows up in real cookies. Roughly speaking the 75 messages fall into four groups:

• Predictions – "Wealth awaits you very soon," "A short stranger will soon enter your life with blessings to share," "You will travel to many exotic places in your lifetime."
• Proverbs and advice – "Fortune favors the brave," "Do not mistake temptation for opportunity," "A closed mouth gathers no feet."
• Romance – "The man or woman you desire feels the same about you," "Keep your eye out for someone special," "Flattery will go far tonight."
• Jokes about being a fortune – "Help! I am being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory," "Actions speak louder than fortune cookies," "Fortune not found? Abort, Retry, Ignore."

Every fortune is positive or neutral. There is nothing in the list that predicts illness, loss or bad luck, so it is safe to use with kids or in a classroom.

Ways people use it

• Homemade fortune cookies – bakers who make their own cookies need a stack of messages to fold inside. Press the button a couple of dozen times and copy the ones you like onto strips of paper.
• Party and classroom games – read a fortune aloud and have everyone act it out, or hand a fortune to each guest as an icebreaker.
• Daily message for a group chat or Slack channel – one fortune a morning is a low-effort way to start a conversation.
• Placeholder text – short, harmless sentences are handy for testing a card layout or notification. If you need whole sentences or paragraphs rather than fortunes, the site has a Random Quote Generator with attributed quotes.
• Writing prompts – "Your shoes will make you happy today" is a stranger starting line than most prompt lists give you. Pair it with the Poetry Prompt Generator or Limerick Generator if you want somewhere to take it.

A short history of the fortune cookie

Fortune cookies are not Chinese in origin. The strongest evidence points to Japanese immigrants in California in the early 1900s, who adapted a Kyoto cracker called tsujiura senbei that was baked with a paper fortune inside. Japanese-American bakeries in San Francisco and Los Angeles supplied them to Chinese restaurants, and when those families were interned during the Second World War, Chinese-American producers took over the trade. By the 1960s the cookies were folded by machine, and today one company in Brooklyn, Wonton Food, makes several million a day and keeps a database of a few thousand messages that it rotates. Fortune cookies are almost unknown in China itself; attempts to sell them there in the 1990s failed because customers found them "too American."

The classic fortune format, a short second-person prediction on a thin strip of paper, dates from that mid-century period, and most of the lines in this generator are in that tradition. The joke fortunes are a later addition, popular since the internet made it easy to share the odd ones.

Sample fortunes

• The man on the top of the mountain did not fall there.
• The fortune you seek is in another cookie.
• Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.
• A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.
• If you look back, you'll soon be going that way.
• Land is always on the mind of a flying bird.

For a different sort of daily line, the Random Bible Verse Generator pulls a verse instead of a fortune, and you can browse all books, quotes and poetry tools for more.