Free Will Quotes - Page 17

• The psychology of a language which, in one way or another, is imposed upon one because of factors beyond one's control, is very different from the psychology of a language which one accepts of one's free will.

  Edward Sapir

  Psychology, Different, Way

  Edward Sapir, Pierre Swiggers (2008). “General Linguistics”, p.277, Walter de Gruyter

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• I believe in free will. Of those that, like us, are in a privileged situation at least. For you, for me: people who are living in western society, people who are not repressed, who are free. We can choose. The things go largely like you want them to go. You control your own life. Your own will is extremely powerful.

  J. K. Rowling

  Wise, Witty, Powerful

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• We would labor earnestly to raise a believer in salvation by free will into a believer in salvation by grace, for we long to see all religious teaching built upon the solid rock of truth and not upon the sand of imagination. At the same time, our grand object is not the revision of opinions, but the regeneration of natures. We should bring men to Christ, not to our own particular views of Christianity.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Religious, Teaching, Men

  Charles Spurgeon (2015). “Select Works”, p.116, Lulu Press, Inc

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• If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place.

  William J. Murray

  Law, Sound, Principles

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• Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Integrity, Lying, Mean

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.115, Macmillan

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• Who would ever care to do brave deed,
  Or strive in virtue others to excel,
  If none should yield him his deserved meed
  Due praise, that is the spur of doing well?
  For if good were not praised more than ill,
  None would choose goodness of his own free will.

  Edmund Spenser

  Yield, Brave, Spurs

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• 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?

  Rush Limbaugh

  Believe, Government, People

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• There is neither creation nor destruction, neither destiny nor free will, neither path nor achievement. This is the final truth.

  Ramana Maharshi

  Destiny, Achievement, Finals

  Ramana (Maharshi) (1959). “Collected Works”

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• What is a human-like droid that operates from a place of free will and has been designed to have a soul? That's fascinating stuff that you just can't quite comprehend quickly. It's not like playing a fireman with a wife and kid. You can gauge where that's going to go and what's going to happen, and you can talk to other people who have done it.

  Michael Ealy

  Kids, Wife, People

  "Michael Ealy Talks ALMOST HUMAN, Connection to His Character, Finding His Performance, Approaching the Humor, and More". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. December 8, 2013.

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• Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Believe, Thinking, Guilt

  Source: thefloatinglibrary.com

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• In fiction, it's as if you enter a dream world that you created, but your characters have their own free will. They don't do what you want them to do - they get into trouble, do drugs, fight over petty things, and do outrageous things that you wouldn't want your children to do. In other words, you can only provide the background, the seeds - in my case the background of the Vietnamese refugee.

  Andrew Lam

  Dream, Children, Character

  "‘Birds of Paradise Lost’: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lam". Interview with Anna Challet, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 5, 2013.

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• adolescence is a sort of underworld we have to live through. Everything is in us, even vice and crime. At the same time we discover free will. I wonder that it doesn't tear us off our bases for good and all.

  Grace Zaring Stone

  Tears, Vices, Wonder

  Ethel Vance, Grace Zaring Stone (1942). “Reprisal”

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• [Jonathan] Edwards definitely shows up in the book [Saving Calvinism]. He appears as one of the interlocutors in the chapter on free will, the other being the Southern Presbyterian theologian John Girardeau.

  Oliver D. Crisp

  Book, Southern, Saving

  Source: edwardsstudies.com

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• But if fate won’t be denied...if it’s set, how could there be infinite possibilities? (Kat) Only certain aspects are fated. The outcome isn’t. It was fated that Sin would loose his godhood. The means and what followed were determined by free will. Free will is that one scary variable that sets so much into motion that no one, not even I, have control over. (Acheron)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Mean, Fate, Scary

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• Loss makes me feel vulnerable. I've had my share, less than so many though, but enough to feel empathy. It's tough and I see it so much on Earth, too much suffering. The loss of free will I find unacceptable - what most of us refer to as rights.

  Kristin Bauer van Straten

  Loss, Empathy, Suffering

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• For free will is what makes us Heaven's creatures.

  Cassandra Clare

  Heaven, Creatures

  Cassandra Clare (2014). “City of Lost Souls”, p.192, Simon and Schuster

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• Because I cursed him to it. (Acheron) Be glad I’m not physically there or I’d slap you upside the head. You know how free will works, so stop the whining and get off the cross. Someone needs the wood. (Savitar)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Needs, Woods, Whining

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• Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place. Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different. Where did the expression "a place in the sun" first come from? My rational thought process cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.

  Frances Mayes

  Fate, Expression, Blood

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• For if good were not praised more than ill,
  None would chuse goodness of his own free will.

  Edmund Spenser

  Praise, Goodness, Ifs

  Edmund Spenser, John Aikin (1810). “Hymns. Visions. Elegiac poems”, p.266

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• The Bible, contrary to what people think, actually puts forth a strong case for no free will, no free will.

  Vincent Bugliosi

  Strong, Thinking, People

  Source: www.cyinterview.com

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• The good we have enjoyed from Heaven's free will, and shall we murmur to endure the ill?

  John Dryden

  Heaven, Endure, Resignation

  John Dryden (1808). “Dramatic works”, p.162

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• You have the illusion of free will, but, in fact, that illusion comes about because you don't know the future. Because you are a prisoner of the present, forever locked in transition, between the past and the future.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Past, Forever, Facts

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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• Schwartz's research suggests something important: we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizeable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.

  Susan Cain

  Personality, Brain, Important

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• Much serious thought has been devoted to the subject of chocolate: What does chocolate mean? Is the pursuit of chocolate a right or a privilege? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will?

  Sandra Boynton

  Mean, Chocolate, Doe

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• That the stars guide us, but do not compel us. It is our free will that determines the outcome of all things. God does impose his will on us, rather he makes it known and allows us to choose if we will follow it.

  Kathleen McGowan

  Stars, Doe, Outcomes

  Kathleen McGowan (2010). “The Poet Prince”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

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