Quotes About Free will

I have been taught that we can make many choices in life, but we cannot choose our final destiny. Our actions do that.

Gravity works in your life, the notion of free will works in your life, however problematic it may at times be.

Biological determinism is a blight on science. It implies that the way things are is the way they must be. [...] This position is wrong, both empirically and morally.

I just havent been conditioned into thinking that the right answer cant be a simple one. When I told you youd been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong?

Poker is the game closest to the western conception of life, where life and thought are recognized as intimately combined, where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents and where — at least in the short run — the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens.

The Enlightenment, however, saw in middle-class man an up-to-date reflection of Aristotle's political animal: a being designed by nature to work peaceably and constructively with others on the basis of free will—and to make a little money while he did it.

Erasmus had no intention of becoming a martyr. In the end, he preferred to work within the boundaries of the Church, not outside them. Despite their mutual antipathy toward the Aristotle of the scholastics, Luther's opposition ran far deeper. It hinged on an issue that had separated Boethius and Saint Augustine at the onset of the Middle Ages. It had at its heart the clash between Plato and Aristotle on free will.

To Boethius, Augustine's "Christian liberty" grated against more ancient ideals of liberty. For one thing, it seemed to strip men of the power of free will.7 If we are going to be happy, we have to be free to act in the world, even if that means we make mistakes.

If the laws of physics are not strictly causal the most that can be said is that the behaviour of the conscious brain is one of the possible behaviours of a mechanical brain. Precisely so; and the decision between the possible behaviours is what we call volition.

power He possesses must be restricted, lest He invade the citadel of man's "free will" and reduce him to a "machine." They lower the all-efficacious atonement, which has actually redeemed everyone for whom it was made, to a mere "remedy," which sin-sick souls may use if they feel disposed to; and they enervate the invincible work of the Holy Spirit to an "offer" of the Gospel which sinners may accept or reject as they please.

If I had created myself, I would be taller, blond, and more well endowed, financially. I would have cast out spiders and bad-hair days. Therefore, and hence, I believe strongly in a Creator who not only gave me the gift, but the free will to create my own journey through life.

Freedom equals power.

God, the soul, salvation, consciousness, love, free will, and purely spiritual causation may seem far more real to you than elementary particles and energy fields. I suggest that if you were able to focus your attention at will, you could actually choose the universe you appear to inhabit.

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?'" Sabriel quoted, the words, redolent with echoes of Charter Magic, twining around her tongue like some lingering spice.

Does the walker choose the path, or the path choose the walker?

You can lead a human to water, but you can't make him drink.

What I worry about ultimately is that when we're stripped of our privacy, when we're stripped of free will, when we start to merge with machines in a more robust way, at some point, we'll cease to be identifiably human. And therefore, I think our humanity is, in some ways, the thing that's under existential threat.

Karma is not a sentence already printed. It is a series of words that authors can arrange as she chooses.

Above all, love must be freely given, by mutual consent on both sides, through the exercise of free will. Because it is thus freely chosen, it is an act of humanity and civilisation, neither a daemonic possession such as hurled Dido upon her funeral pyre or Medea upon her children, not the base stirrings of concupiscence.

All of these men were good listeners, patient men. They had one other thing in common. They were those rarities, men who had refused to accept the rule of organized society, men who refused the dominion of other men. There was no force, no mortal man who could bend them to their will unless they wished it. They were men who guarded their free will with wiles and murder. Their wills could be subverted only by death. Or the utmost reasonableness.

Is man's destiny determined by the vicissitudes of environment or free will? I argue that it is free will, because what we think, what we dwell upon in our heads, whether it be fears or dreams, has a direct effect upon the physical world. The more you think about your downfall, your ruin, the greater the likelihood that it will occur. And conversely, the more one thinks of victory, the more likely one will achieve it.

In this sense, Calvin did assert a belief in "free will," which, for Calvin, amounted not to a human's natural ability to choose what is good but to his voluntary choice to do what is evil. Because of the fallenness of human nature, the only freedom of the human will, apart from grace, is the freedom from righteousness.

Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.