Free Will Quotes - Page 7

• The plan of spiritual evolution is marked not only by God's will that we move ever in the direction of love, nut also by another of God's creative principles: that humanity has free will. What that means is that in any given moment, it is our choice whether we move toward love or retreat from it. What is not love is fear. But in the larger scheme of things, there is a limit past which lovelessness cannot remain. Fear is not life-giving enough to sustain itself. We can move in the direction of fear only so long before it brings us to our knees, or to our end.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, Moving, Mean

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• Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Hands, Benevolence, Recalls

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• Does not any limit imposed upon one inspire a desire to go beyond it? Does not our keenest suffering arise when our free will is crossed?

  Honore de Balzac

  Inspire, Suffering, Desire

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• We are able to persevere only because God works within us, within our free wills. And because God is at work in us, we are certain to persevere. The decrees of God concerning election are immutable. They do not change, because He does not change. All whom He justifies He glorifies. None of the elect has ever been lost.

  R. C. Sproul

  Giving Up, Doe, Able

  R.C. Sproul (2017). “The R.C. Sproul Collection Volume 1: The Holiness of God / Chosen by God”, p.364, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

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• I was brought up to believe in free will. Although I came to doubt all revelation, I can never accept the idea that the Universe is a physical or chemical accident, a result of blind evolution. Even though I learned to recognize the lies, the clichés and the idolatries of the human mind, I still cling to some truths which I think all of us might accept some day.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Lying, Believe, Thinking

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

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• If the Internet can be described as a giant human consciousness, then viral marketing is the illusion of free will.

  George Pendle

  Marketing, Giants, Consciousness

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• Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.

  Voltaire

  Expression, Ideas, Wish

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• In our current understanding of science, we can't find the physical gap in which to slip free will - the uncaused causer - because there seems to be no part of the machinery that does not follow in a causal relationship from the other parts.

  David Eagleman

  Understanding, Doe, Gaps

  David Eagleman (2011). “Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain”, p.175, Vintage

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• Grace is necessary to salvation, free will equally so - but grace in order to give salvation, free will in order to receive it.

  Bernard of Clairvaux

  Order, Giving, Grace

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• The important thing to realize is that while we may not escape our own basic pattern, we can work in harmony with it. That is where free will comes in. Once having chosen, a man has to accept the consequences of his choice, and go on from there.

  Swami Yogananda

  Men, Choices, Important

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• This doctrine, that of the ghost in the machine, strictly separates the mind or soul from the body. And by doing so it takes the soul outside the sphere of mechanical or scientific explanation. It splits the world of the mind from the world of science. It is often supposed to protect our cherished free will.

  Simon Blackburn

  Soul, Mind, Machines

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• It does not matter what name you attach to it, but your consciousness must ascend to the point through which you view the universe with your God-centered nature. The feeling accompanying this experience is that of complete oneness with the Universal Whole... This God-centered nature is constantly awaiting to govern your life gloriously. You have the free will to either allow it to govern your life, or not to allow it to affect you. The choice is always yours!

  Peace Pilgrim

  Views, Names, Oneness

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• ...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Mean, Men, Doe

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

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• If God thinks this state of war in the universe is a price worth paying for free will--that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings--then we may take it it is worth paying.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, War, Moving

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.53, HarperCollins UK

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• Call it no more free-will, but slavish lust; free to evil, but free from good, till regenerating grace loosens the bands of wickedness.

  Thomas Boston

  Evil, Grace, Lust

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• Only when he voluntarily chooses that which he inexorably must do, has man any free will at all.

  Mary Esther Harding

  Men, Choices

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• If free will exists, why do the tallest candidates with the best hair usually win elections ?

  Scott Adams

  Winning, Hair, Political

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• The person in peak-experiences feels himself, more than other times, to be the responsible, active, creating center of his activities and of his perceptions. He feels more like a prime-mover, more self-determined (rather than caused, determined, helpless, dependent, passive, weak, bossed). He feels himself to be his own boss, fully responsible, fully volitional, with more "free-will" than at other times, master of his fate, an agent.

  Abraham Maslow

  Fate, Creating, Agency

  Abraham Harold Maslow (1999). “Toward a psychology of being”, Wiley

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• One of my core beliefs is that belief itself is a choice that can be made of our own free will.

  Steve Pavlina

  Choices, Belief, Made

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• You are the Creator of your reality... you were granted this ability. You have free will... you are an unlimited aspect, a portion of God... of the Creator... of All That Is.

  Darryl Anka

  Spiritual, Reality, Law Of Attraction

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• As far as I can see, it's not important that we have free will, just as long as we have the illusion of free will to stop us going mad.

  Alan Moore

  Long, Mad, Important

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• When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying.

  Samuel Butler

  Science, Talking, Law

  Samuel Butler (2008). “The Note-books of Samuel Butler: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.121, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Think of destiny more like potentiality because of an element called - free will.

  Ruben Papian

  Destiny, Thinking, Elements

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• Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Men, Evil, Agents

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.43, Courier Corporation

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• As a bio major, I figured "free will" meant chemicals in your brain telling you what to do, the molecules bouncing around in a way that felt like choosing but was actually the dance of little gears--neurons and hormones bubbling up into decisions like clockwork. You don't use your body; it uses you.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Decision, Brain, Molecules

  Scott Westerfeld (2006). “Peeps”, p.6, Penguin

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