Free Will Quotes - Page 19

• if the will is their servant then it is not sovereign, and if the will is not sovereign, we certainly cannot predicate 'freedom' of it.

  Arthur W. Pink

  Sovereign, Servant, Ifs

  Arthur W. Pink (2008). “Sovereignty of God”, p.161, Sovereign Grace Publishers,

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• The inward persuasion that we are free to do, or not to do a thing, is but a mere illusion. If we trace the true principle of our actions, we shall find, that they are always necessary consequences of our volitions and desires, which are never in our power. You think yourself free, because you do what you will; but are you free to will, or not to will; to desire, or not to desire? Are not your volitions and desires necessarily excited by objects or qualities totally independent of you?

  Baron d'Holbach

  Independent, Thinking, Desire

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• If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.

  Albert Einstein

  Taken, Moon, Men

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• I should . . . prefer swallowing one incomprehensibility rather than two. It requires one effort only to admit the single incomprehensibility of matter endowed with thought, and two to believe, first that of an existence called spirit, of which we have neither evidence nor idea, and then secondly how that spirit, which has neither extension nor solidity, can put material organs into motion.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Ideas, Two

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.153

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• When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is the result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth, and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination... When a motorcar fails to start, we do not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, we do not say, you are a wicked motorcar, and you shall not have any more gasoline until you go.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Men, Long

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• You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Want, What You Want

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• I'm going to kill that god of yours, next. Then we'll see what you can do, and what you can't.

  Janet Morris

  God, Next, Can Do

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• One lot apiece, one chance to undo an error or secure a fate.

  Janet Morris

  Responsibility, Fate, Destiny

  Janet Morris (1989). “Tempus Unbound”, Pocket Books

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• Here and now was always where Tempus was, not off somewhere in the realm of Greater Good or Mortal Soul or Eternal Consequence. He'd lost the ability to determine greater good, if there was one; his mortal soul he'd given up on long ago. And as for eternal consequence - he was its embodiment.

  Janet Morris

  Long Ago, Soul, Embodiment

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• It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.

  Jean Nidetch

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive Thinking

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• Given for one instant an intelligence which could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the beings which compose it, if moreover this intelligence were vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in the same formula both the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atom; to it nothing would be uncertain, and the future as the past would be present to its eye.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Eye, Past, Data

  Oeuvres vol. 7, introduction (1812 - 1820)

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• What multitudes, O Lord, do this day join hands with Pelagius in contending for free will and in fighting ... free grace.

  Thomas Bradwardine

  Fighting, Hands, Grace

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• No free will of the creature can resist the will of God

  Girolamo Zanchi

  Gods Will, Creatures

  Girolamo Zanchi, Augustus Toplady, Justus Lipsius (1811). “The doctrine of absolute predestination stated and asserted”, p.75

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• we grant evil freewill (or freewill to evil) is remaining in all natural men: we believe that freewill to good, is from grace and regeneration.

  Henry Ainsworth

  Believe, Men, Evil

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• many men have too much Free-will, and take to themselves too free liberty now a days to advance and maintain free will.

  Daniel Featley

  Men, Liberty, Too Much

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• It is proved out of the holy scriptures that an unregenerate man is altogether destitute of the power and liberty of his will, in those things that pertain to faith and salvation.

  Peter du Moulin

  Men, Liberty, Scripture

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• The bending of men's hearts to believe and persevere are the supernatural fruits of God's eternal decree, and not the natural fruits of man's depraved and frail free-will.

  William Jenkyn

  Believe, Heart, Men

  "An Exposition Upon the Epistle of Jude: Delivered in Christ-Church, London".

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• The word "freewill" (as also "self-determining power" [autexousiou] used by the Greek Fathers) does not occur in Scripture ... I Cor 7:37 does not mean freedom of the will.

  Francis Turretin

  Father, Mean, Self

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• This re-appearance of the doctrine of freewill serves to support that of the pretension of the natural man to be not irremediably fallen, for this is what such doctrine tends to. All who have never been deeply convicted of sin, all persons in whom this conviction is based on gross external sins, believe more or less in freewill

  John Nelson Darby

  Believe, Men, Support

  John Nelson Darby (1881). “Letters by J.N.D., 1849-1875; extracts tr. from the French”

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• The purpose of problems is to push you toward obedience to God's laws, which are exact and cannot be changed. We have the free will to obey them or disobey them. Obedience will bring harmony, disobedience will bring you more problems... There was a time when I thought it was a nuisance to be confronted with a problem. I tried to get rid of it. I tried to get somebody else to solve it for me. But that was a long time ago. It was a great day in my life when I discovered the wonderful purpose of problems. Yes, they have a wonderful purpose.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Law, Long, Great Day

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• I would not preach tolerance, which seems to me another name for condescension and presupposes faults in those to be tolerated ... Nor do I believe in demanding love - that should be the gift of a free will. But simply to be kind - that is not too much to ask of any of us.

  Josephine Lawrence

  Kindness, Believe, Names

  Josephine Lawrence (1945). “Let Us Consider One Another”, New York ; London : . Appleton-Century

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• The Bible puts forth a strong case for no free will and that's a real problem you know, because the justification for supposedly being punished after death is that you had free will. If you didn't have free will and you did what God predetermined, then how can he punish you?"

  Vincent Bugliosi

  Strong, Real, Problem

  Source: www.cyinterview.com

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• Adults tend to think they have much free will. Kids younger than six are less sure. They may be more realistic!

  Alison Gopnik

  Kids, Thinking, Realistic

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• La Zona is such a closed area, a dangerous, outlaw area. My time in the Zona was a time outside of society, almost out of the real world. And the girls there had such a sense of irony and sarcasm. They were also really interested in my film. They'd be like, "Thank God we live in Mexico, because our kind of prostitution has a heart. We wouldn't want to sit behind a glass cage or be sold by our own mothers. We have free will."

  Michael Glawogger

  Girl, Mother, Real

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• William Graebner's brilliant analysis of America's struggles over the meaning of Patty Hearst gives us not only new perspectives on the 1970s, on Americans' fundamental understandings of their world in a bicentennial year that offered little to celebrate, but also on the longing for heroism and the desire for belief in free will that Graebner believes structured the rise of Reagan-era conservatism. This is a masterful work of cultural history.

  Beth Bailey

  Believe, Struggle, Years

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