Free Will Quotes - Page 16

• Never forget that we are more than the genetic code. We can be more than labels applied to us. We can be more than what others whisper behind our backs. Free will exists. We need to choose to be the best we can be and we need to help others do the same. Believe in yourself.

  Sophie Jordan

  Believe, Helping Others, Needs

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• I wonder whether being a scientists daughter makes you so conflicted about free will and fate.

  Lucy Hawking

  Daughter, Fate, Wonder

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• Camping has become one of my most beloved pastimes. I take a fierce delight in swinging a pak o my back or into a canoe and heading for the hills or lakes. In my opinion, camping can be the greatest expression of free will, personal independence, innate ability, and resourcefulness possible today in our industrialized, urbanized existence. Regardless of how miserable or how splendid the circumstances, the sheer experience of camping seems a total justification for doing it.

  Anne LaBastille

  Lakes, Expression, Independence

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• The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows it to realize its supreme purpose through him.

  Carl Jung

  Art, Purpose, Realizing

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• I know we can each do something, however small that act may seem to be. We can pay an honest tithe and give our fast and free-will offerings, according to our circumstances. And we can watch for other ways to help.

  Jeffrey R. Holland

  Honesty, Offering, Giving

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• To his mind, free will was a privilege, not a right.

  J.R. Ward

  Mind, Mind Free, Privilege

  J.R. Ward (2011). “Lover Unleashed: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.29, Penguin

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• I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Zero, Humility, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi (1980). “All Men are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections”, p.35, A&C Black

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• According to Buddhism, individuals are masters of their own destiny. And all living beings are believed to possess the nature of the Primordial Buddha Samantabhadra, the potential or seed of enlightenment, within them. So our future is in our own hands. What greater free will do we need?

  Dalai Lama

  Buddhism, Destiny, Hands

  Dalai Lama (2004). “Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection”, Snow Lion Publication

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• The Bible consistently denies free will.

  Gordon Clark

  Deny, Consistently

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• I was very fierce and very driven at eighteen. But my basic philosophy I think has stayed the same, I'm still an atheist, I still believe strongly in the power of free will (despite the mysticism in my prose). I don't believe in the notion of a pre-ordained destiny, and I think because of the sudden death of my father at sixteen I learnt then that it is essential to live life to the fullest as it could be snatched away at any second.

  Tobsha Learner

  Atheist, Father, Philosophy

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• The only way God could impose peace on the world would be to robotize our wills and rob every human being of the power of choice. He has not chosen to do that. He has given every person a free will.

  John Haggai

  God, Choices, Would Be

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• We have already shown that there is no such thing as free will. That's a will-o'-the-wisp. You never make choices without reasons, not as a responsible or a rational person

  John Gerstner

  Choices, Reason, Responsible

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• Once various forms were signed, I was separated from my free will, led down the corridors into a room which was now to be the boundary of my existence, told to surrender my clothes, handed that comic invention, the hospital gown, and sent to bed in broad daylight like a child being stripped of her privileges.

  Dorothy West

  Children, Clothes, Bed

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• In the words of the late Francis Crick...You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. (13)

  Mary Roach

  Memories, Ambition, Science

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• It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist.

  Edmund Burke

  Loss, Men, Political

  Edmund Burke (1999). “The Portable Edmund Burke”, p.433, Penguin

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• I do give them to you," he announced. "Of my free will. Because this is my sword." He laid a hand on Arisa's shoulder. "And Weasle is my shield. What you hold are only pieces of iron.

  Hilari Bell

  Hands, Iron, Giving

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• Nothing perceivable is real.Your attachment is your bondage. You cannot control the future.There is no such thing as free will. Will is bondage.You identify yourself with your desires and become their slave.

  Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

  Real, Attachment, Desire

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• The Now is as it is because it cannot be otherwise. What Buddhists have always known, physicists now confirm: there are no isolated things or events. Underneath the surface appearance, all things are interconnected, are part of the totality of the cosmos that has brought about the form that this moment takes.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Buddhist, Cosmos, Events

  Eckhart Tolle (2003). “Stillness Speaks”, p.43, New World Library

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• Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. . Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Choices, Awareness, Found

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• I'm convinced that we can write and live our own scripts more than most people will acknowledge. I also know the price that must be paid. It's a real struggle to do it. It requires visualization and affirmation. It involves living a life of integrity, starting with making and keeping promises, until the whole human personality the senses, the thinking, the feeling, and the intuition are ultimately integrated and harmonized.

  Stephen Covey

  Integrity, Real, Struggle

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• Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.

  Charles Darwin

  Science, Mind, Matter

  Charles Darwin, Thomas F. Glick, David Kohn (1996). “On Evolution: The Development of the Theory of Natural Selection”, p.78, Hackett Publishing

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• You know, it’s the same thing as the question of free will and destiny, the question of creativity - you, the artist, you’re not the puppet of the piano, you’re not the puppet of the muse, but you’re not its master, either. It’s a relationship, it’s a conversation, and all it wants is to be treated with respect and dignity - and it will return ten thousand times over.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Creativity, Artist, Destiny

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• The great paradox of determinism and free will, which has held the attention of the wisest of philosophers and psychologists for generations, can be phrased in more biological terms as follows: If our genes are inherited, and our environment is a train of physical events set in motion before we were born, how can there be a truly independent agent within the brain? The agent itself is created by the interaction of the genes and the environment. It would appear that our freedom is only a self delusion.

  E. O. Wilson

  Independent, Self, Brain

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• I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Thinking, People, Important

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• No tribe unites with another of its own free will.

  Arthur Keith

  Tribes

  Sir Arthur Keith (1947). “Evolution and Ethics”

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