Quotes About Agency

You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we have exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

I cannot decide what I will next think or intend until a thought or intention arises. What will my next mental state be? I do not know—it just happens. Where is the freedom in that?

Free will is an illusion.

Our wills are simply not of own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have

It solves the problem of "free will" by ignoring it. How can we be "free" as conscious agents if everything

Without free will, sinners and criminals would be nothing more than poorly calibrated clockwork

When Reagan was elected, I felt that the Agency had gone much more into the service of a political tendency in the country with which I had already felt very strong disagreement.

When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The one way he can reach it is by prayer.

Since I will be no one's slave, I will be no one's master.

Today's marketing success comes from self-publishing web content that people want to share. It's not about gimmicks. It's not about paying an agency to interrupt others.

Do you ever get the feeling that your life isn't really your own, and you've just sort of let things happen to you?

We make our own fate. And then all at once she realized they did. They could not control it, but they could choose how to respond to what happened.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking that they don't have any.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any

the identity of an individual is essentially a function of her choices, rather than the discovery of an immutable attribute

Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency. The removal of substantial unfreedoms, it is argued here, is constitutive of development.

Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can, that's my advice.

Worry less about what the gods might do and more about what you can,

I know you like to think you're jolting about helpless in a runaway cart, carried off to who-knows-where with no say in the matter, but if you look down, you might see you're holding the reins.

Sometimes I think every man wants to be a writer. They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggressions with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight – or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won't follow an outline.

Sometimes I think every man wants to be a writer. They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggression with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight—or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won't follow an outline.

What we have to remember is that not everything is under our control. If people are free in any meaningful sense of the word, that means they are at liberty to foul up their lives as much as make something grand of them. That's a gamble we all take. That's the risk of liberty. Nobody wants others to screw up their lives, but each must be free to do so for themselves.