Quotes About Free will

That free will was demonstrated in the placing of temptation before man with the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree which would give him a knowledge of good and evil, with the disturbing moral conflict to which that awareness would give rise.

We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.

Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is "man" in a higher sense— he is "collective man"— one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind.

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will -- and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. Gene Roddenberry

Certainly, the mistakes that we male and female mortals make when we have our own way might fairly raise some wonder that we're so fond of it.

Footnote: The real morality of actions—their merit or demerit, and even that of our own conduct, is completely unknown to us. Our estimates can relate only to their empirical character. How much is the result of the action of free will, how much is to be ascribed to nature and to blameless error, or to a happy constitution of temperament (merito fortunae), no one can discover, nor, for this reason, determine with perfect justice.]

Now how I play a part, as an individual, in the foreseen course of history, I don't know. Perhaps I have no definite part, since the Plan leaves individuals to indeterminacy and free will. But I am important and they—they, you understand—may at least have calculated my probable reaction. So I distrust my impulses, my desires, my probable reactions.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determination; the way you play it is free will.

Nothing hath separated us from God but our own will, or rather our own will is our separation from God.

If you believe in free will, why don't you have confidence in people to use it? Why do you want a government, or whoever, regulating them, if you believe in it?

Your true nature doesn't come out. So the gods let you do what you want because free will would be compromised if they showed up at the White House saying, 'Take us to your leader.

None of us can choose where we shall love...

The mystery of free will versus predestination. You're going to tie yourself up with that one, Mona. Either God is in charge or He's not. We can go round and round about the origin of evil, but the buck stops at God. The question isn't who causes something to happen, but rather, whether you see the outcome with His eyes or yours. Whether or not you trust He's got it all in His hands.

To read, when one does so of one's own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and to set off toward it.

I was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a major neighborhood specializing in that, in Brooklyn. And somewhere when I was about 14, something changed. And that change probably involved updating every molecule in my body, in that I sort of realized: this is nonsense, there's no God, there's no free will, there is no purpose.

It is said that our destiny is set, predetermined before conception. But I myself, have never been a believer…

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.

When and why do we attribute a person's behavior to brain disease, and when and why do we not do so? Briefly, the answer is that we often attribute bad behavior to disease (to excuse the agent);never attribute good behavior to disease (lest we deprive the agent of credit); and typically attribute good behavior to free will and insist bad behavior called mental illness is a no fault act of nature.

Free will, as C.S. Lewis said, 'is the modus operandi of destiny'. Fate, too, chooses one's fellow hotel guests. I cursed mine inaudibly.

If everything from the furthest planet to the smallest atom of our brain acts according to Newton's law of motion, what becomes of free will?

No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever. This is known as free will or self-determination.

Y solo por amor se extingue una estrella, si ha elegido libremente su final.

si ha elegido libremente su final.>>

something worse than death awaited all who remained: loss of free will. To give up would have been to dishonour those who had perished fighting for the good of all the lands. In their deaths we found the spirit and courage to go on. It gave us new purpose.