105 Quotes Tagged: free-will

Let us not forget this: when 'I raise my arm', my arm goes up. And the problem arises: what is left over if I subtract the fact that my arm goes up from the fact that I raise my arm?

Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself.

According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

Yes I have free will; I have no choice but to have it.

Despite our attachment to the notion of free will, most of us know that disorders of the brain can trump the best intentions of the mind. This shift in understanding represents progress toward a deeper, more consistent, and more compassionate view of our common humanity — and we should note that this is progress away from religious metaphysics. Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands
independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin — which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal
punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance.

You can't take credit for your talents, but it matters that you use them. You can't really be blamed for your weaknesses, but it matters that you correct them. So pride and shame don't make a lot of sense, in the final analysis, but they weren't much fun anyway.

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

We must believe in free will. We have no choice.

True love is built on free will and free choice, not control and manipulation.

God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.

Liberty is not an Idea belonging to Volition, or preferring; but to the Person having the Power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the Mind shall chuse or direct.

Willpower is itself a biological phenomenon. You can change your life, and yourself, through effort and discipline — but you have whatever capacity for effort and discipline you have in this moment, and not a scintilla more (or less). You are either lucky in this department or you aren’t — and you cannot make your own luck.