Quotes About Free will

In ancient times, determinism rested on a belief in an omniscient God. Today, it is not old-time religion, but, rather, our culture's newfound faith - science - that challenges the belief in free will.

Carried to its logical limits, a system in which no one has a choice about what action to take is unworkable.

In 1986 Eccles proposed that the probability of neurotransmitter release depended on quantum mechanical processes, which can be influenced by the intervention of the mind. This, Eccles said, provided a basis for the action of a free will.

It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains. (Thomas H. Huxley, English biologist; known as Darwin's Bulldog

The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place. Or, at least not yet again. As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility.

So nothing can be ours by right, by nature, or by necessity. But one thing is mine by my free choice: the self I give away in love. This is the thing even God cannot do for me. It really is my choice. God can love, but He cannot compel my free love. If it is compelled, it is not free. If it is free, it is not compelled.

He offers total mercy and forgiveness to all who will accept it by trusting Him and repenting of their sins, but He does not, and cannot, give forgiveness to those who will not receive His gift. Gifts are freely given and freely received. Heaven cannot be forced on a creature with free will.

Even God cannot make us love him. "Forced love" is a meaningless impossibility, like "virtuous sin".

we have that the animal does not: reason and free will, or free choice.

4) But only man knows consciously and rationally, and only man's loves can be conscious and rational and responsible through free will.

Human infants are semi-robots who possess, however, a limited though vigorous free will. Some of them become adults who use free will as much as possible. But the majority use their free will only once in their lives, that is, at the moment they unconsciously decide they won't ever use their free will.

Death at each moment, one avenue which is open to us at any point. And eventually we choose it, in spite of ourselves. Or we give up and take it deliberately.

You speak of destiny as if it was fixed. And I ain't sure I like that any more than a war I'm enlisted in without knowing about it. Where's my free will, if you please?

injustice is not caused by an abstraction called "society," as we on the left had maintained. Nor was injustice caused by oppressive races and genders, or solely by our political enemies. Injustice is the result of human selfishness, deceitfulness, malice, envy, greed, and lust. Injustice is the inevitable consequence of our free will as human beings. "Society" is not the cause of injustice. Society is merely a reflection of who we are.

Free will makes us the authors of our own choices, our own sins, our own fates—not other people, not classes or races or genders.

Freedom is also about what you will allow yourself to do.

It's up to you, not fate. True. But it was also up to Lily. That was the trickiest part.

This whole story doesn't make sense! Why would God create a perfect place and then allow the Devil in it, just to trick you? Why tell you not to do something when He could have just removed the tree, and so avoided the problem completely? - Cain

Fate isn't one straight road…there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

Without faith to act as a governor, the human mind is a runaway worry generator, a dynamo of negative expectations. And because your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will, if you entertain too much anxiety about too many things, if you place no trust in providence, what you fear will more often come to pass. We make so many of our own troubles, from mere mishaps to disasters, by dwelling on the possibility of them until the possible becomes inevitable.

Nothing is predetermined for us, and yet all our possible choices are threads in the vast weave of things, so that we have free will even though the consequences of our will are predictable.

Free will, she agreed, our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.

what makes humanity beautiful is our free will, our individuality, our endless striving in spite of our imperfection. BY THE LIGHT OF THE MOON Chapter 27 Page 214