Quotes About Free will

Genes are deterministic but they are not destiny.

God is never at a loss because He cannot find someone to cooperate with Him in carrying out His plan. He so moves in the hearts of people - either Christians or non Christians, it makes no difference - that they willingly, of their own free will carry out His plans.

Andrew Murray wrote, "In creating man with a free will and making him a partner in the rule of the earth, God limited himself. He made himself dependent on what man would do. Man by his prayer would hold the measure of what God could do in blessing" (emphasis added).2

The Bible teaches both the sovereignty of God and the free moral choices of men with equal emphasis.

Innate creativity may have an underlying chaotic process that selectively amplifies small fluctuations and molds them into macroscopic coherent mental states that are experienced as thoughts. In some cases the thoughts may be decisions, or what are perceived to be the exercise of will. In this light, chaos provides a mechanism that allows for free will within a world governed by deterministic laws.

Freedom is priceless.

I don't know that I believe that God is in control of everything that happens. As a Jew, I believe that we have free will and we are responsible for our actions. But I guess it's something I'm still probing.

We believe we choose the paths we take when we come to those forks in our lives—the friends we make, the careers we undertake, the spouses we marry. But we don't.

We must believe in free will. We have no choice. – Isaac Bashevis Singer

I believe that much of what we experience in life has been prescripted. But I also believe that we, as human beings, have an enormous amount of choice to create the beautiful lives of our dreams. Fate and our choices work in concert to sculpt the look of our lives. And it is in our conscious choice-making that, ultimately, our destinies are realized. To forget this is to play the victim. To disregard this truth is to deny the power that has been granted to you to create all that you want.

Awareness, I take to be one aspect-the passive aspect-of the phenomenon of consciousness. Consciousness has an active aspect also, namely the feeling of free will.

I believe all suffering contains at least the opportunity for good," came his response, "but not everyone actualizes that potential. Not all of us learn and benefit from suffering; that's where free will comes in. One prisoner in a concentration camp will react quite differently from another, because of the choice each one makes to respond to the environment.

Real love—our love of God and our love of each other—must involve a choice. But with the granting of that choice comes the possibility that people would choose instead to hate.

Eve didn't choose to eat the apple. She was tempted by the serpent. Yes, I argue, thoughts coming out half-formed. But...she didn't have to take a bite. She chose to.

Any good world would allow for us to have free will, yes? he continued. Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices - and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world.

I don't go for the bogeyman. There's plenty of evil to fight in life without having to make up devils and demons and ghosts. If you believe that there is Evil in the world, capital E, doesn't that take away your belief in free will? I still maintain that people have choices. To do right. To have hope. To give hope

Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices—and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world.

Any good world would allow for us to have free will, yes?" he continued. "Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices—and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world.

You are the Creator of your reality... you were granted this ability. You have free will... you are an unlimited aspect, a portion of God... of the Creator... of All That Is.

Free will means that you have the choice to connect to spirit... or not.

If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord. . . . So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will not only its moment to jump off but its direction. In that case I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist.

But this is a general objection of the sceptical sort to all miracles of whatever kind, and leadeth anon into the quagmire of arguments about Free Will. The Adept will do better to rely upon The Book of the Law , which urgeth constantly to action. Even rash action is better than none, by that Light; let the Magician then argue that his folly is part of the natural order which worketh all so well. — Liber DCXXXIII De Thaumaturgia

God wants us to understand Him and to think about His power. That's why He has given us a free will.