Free Will Quotes - Page 10

• Many scientists think that philosophy has no place, so for me it's a sad time because the role of reflection, contemplation, meditation, self-inquiry, insight, intuition, imagination, creativity, free will, is in a way not given any importance, which is the domain of philosophers.

  Deepak Chopra

  Philosophy, Creativity, Reflection

  "Exclusive: Deepak Chopra Explores the Evolution of God". Interview with Dan Schawbel, www.forbes.com. September 25, 2012.

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• Free will exists within each of us. Most people choose not to use their free will, so consequently they rarely alter their karmic patterns.

  Frederick Lenz

  Karma, People, Use

  Frederick Lenz (1995). “Surfing the Himalayas: A Spiritual Adventure”, St Martins Press

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• I made the assumption, wrong of course, that conceptual analysis was a brief preliminary on the road to finding out about the nature of free will, consciousness, the self, the origin of values, and so forth.

  Patricia Churchland

  Self, Analysis, Assumption

  "Causal machines". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. April 10, 2012.

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• The loss of free will I find unacceptable - what most of us refer to as rights.

  Kristin Bauer van Straten

  Loss, Rights

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• We know what works: freedom works. We know what's right: freedom is right. We know how to secure a more and 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.

  George H. W. Bush

  Exercise, Men, Presidential

  Presidential Inaugural Address, delivered 20 January 1989

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• The conundrum of free will and destiny has always kept me dangling.

  William Shatner

  Destiny, Conundrums

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• Consciousness is a pitiful hostage of its flesh-envelope, whose surges, circuits, and secret murmurings it cannot stay or speed. This is the chthonian drama that has no climax but only an enedless round, cycle upon cycle. Microcosm mirrors macrocosm. Free will is stillborn in the red cells of our body, for there is no free will in nature. Our choices come to us prepackaged and special delivery, molded by hands not our own.

  Camille Paglia

  Drama, Mirrors, Cells

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• If we want to try again, then try again. The point is we have free will to act and accomplish along with the peace of knowing whatever happens is what needs to happen in order for nature to fulfill its destiny, which we are part of.

  Bryan Kest

  Destiny, Order, Knowing

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• The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens ) and human free will (in the factual rather than theological sense) are conjoined concepts, and no better evidence can be produced than the "experimental" production of markedly different solutions in identical environments.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Different, Culture, Environment

  Stephen Jay Gould (1993). “Eight little piggies: reflections in natural history”, Vintage

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• It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.

  Tertullian

  Nature, Men, Religion

  Tertullian (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Tertullian (Annotated Edition)”, p.247, Jazzybee Verlag

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• In fact, the machine doesn't have the consciousness we have, the free will that we have, and to surrender one's free will, not in every matter but in spiritual matters, to a spiritual teacher is in a sense a lower level of surrendering one's will to God.

  Seyyed Hossein Nasr

  Spiritual, Teacher, Machines

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• There is too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own free will. I must concede you the Devil. God doesn't really need to punish us, Miss Barton. We're so busy punishing ourselves.

  Agatha Christie

  Men, Evil, Missing

  AGATHA CHRISTIE (1980). “MISS MARPLE MEETS MURDER”

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

  Margaret Atwood

  May, Gravity, Notion

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• All our wanting comes from needs, thus we continiously suffer. The intellect teaches free will, free from suffering.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Suffering, Needs, Teach

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• For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Men, Choices, Desire

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2012). “The Best Short Stories of Fyodor Dostoevsky”, p.117, Modern Library

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• All of us prepare our own lunch. If we don't like our jobs, if we don't like the state of our relationships, if we don't like what's happening to our spiritual lives - we have no one to blame but ourselves. Because God has given us free will.

  Bo Sanchez

  Spiritual, Jobs, Lunch

  Bo Sanchez “You Have The Power To Create Love”, Shepherds Voice Publications, Inc.

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• Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.

  Ted Chiang

  Book, Exercise, Choices

  Ted Chiang (2010). “Stories of Your Life and Others”, p.137, Knopf

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• But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Views, Subjectivity, Kind

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• Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

  Brian Greene

  Real, Law, Choices

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• ... there is clearly expressed for us? what it is we must attribute either to free will or to the decision and daily assistance of the Lord. We are characterized by whether we respond zealously or lackadaisically to the kindly dispensations of God. This perspective is plainly expressed in the healing of the two blind men. Jesus was passing by, a fact made possible by God's provident grace. And the achievement of their own faith and belief was to cry out 'Lord, son of David, have mercy on us' (Mt. 20:31). The restored sight of their eyes is the gift of divine mercy.

  John Cassian

  Christian, Jesus, Eye

  John Cassian, Colm Luibhéid (1985). “Conferences”, p.98, Paulist Press

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• In this state [man's fallen condition], the Free Will of man toward the True God is not only wounded, maimed, infirm, bent, and weakened; but it is also imprisoned, destroyed and lost. And its powers are not only debilitated and useless unless they be assisted by grace, but it has no powers whatever except such as are excited by Divine grace.

  Jacobus Arminius

  Men, Grace, Useless

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• Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

  James Martineau

  Character, Temptation, Battle

  James Martineau (1879). “Hours of thought on sacred things, sermons”

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• I think if there were to be a solution to the problem of free will, it would have to be a compatibilist one. Unfortunately, from that it does not follow that there is such a solution. Many philosophers find this an unwelcome message, and as often happens in philosophy, they punish the messenger by ascribing to him an entirely imaginary but untenable position.

  Allen W. Wood

  Philosophy, Thinking, Doe

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If I go for the alternative which is false, then obviously I shall be in error; if I take the other side, then it is by... chance that I arrive at the truth, and I shall still be at fault.... In this incorrect use of free will may be found the privation which constitutes the essence of error.

  Rene Descartes

  Essence, Errors, May

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free will, self nor other. There is simply one all-inclusive Happening, in which your personal sensation of being alive occurs in just the same way as the river flowing and the stars shining far out in space. There is no question of submitting or accepting or going with it, for what happens in and as you is no different from what happens as it.

  Alan Watts

  Stars, Fate, Self

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