Free Will Quotes - Page 9

• At twenty your choices are almost unlimited. At fifty you're a prisoner of past decisions. At seventy you have no free will left at all.

  Helen McCloy

  Past, Choices, Decision

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• I just haven't been conditioned into thinking that the right answer can't be a simple one. When I told you you'd been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong?

  John Brunner

  Attitude, Opportunity, Simple

  John Brunner (2011). “Stand on Zanzibar”, p.491, Macmillan

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• Britain makes it absolutely, blindingly clear that it is liberal social welfare policies. And they have turned a good chunk of their native population into animals. They are absolute animals. They are not humans with free will. They eat, they screw, they drink.

  Ann Coulter

  Animal, Population, Drink

  "Ann Coulter: Liberal Policies Led to U.K. Riots". "The O'Reilly Factor" with Bill O'Reilly, www.foxnews.com. August 11, 2011.

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• It is what we are forced to do that forms our character, not what we do of our own free will.

  Alberto Moravia

  Character, Form

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• Feminism means having a choice. And feminism doesn't care which choices you make, either. Just that you have them. The point has never been to establish some principled refusal to give yourself to another human being. The point is to make sure you can give yourself--or not give yourself--of your free will.

  Rachel Kadish

  Mean, Giving, Choices

  Rachel Kadish (2007). “Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story”, p.317, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I must honor those who fight of their own free will, he said to himself. And I must try to imitate their courage by following my path as a pacifist, wherever it takes me.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Fighting, Honor, Trying

  "Christopher and His Kind". Book by Christopher Isherwood, p. 336, 1976.

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• Athos liked every one to exercise his own free-will. He never gave his advice before it was demanded and even then it must be demanded twice. "In general, people only ask for advice," he said "that they may not follow it or if they should follow it that they may have somebody to blame for having given it".

  Alexandre Dumas

  Exercise, People, Advice

  Alexandre Dumas (1993). “The Three Musketeers”, p.303, Wordsworth Editions

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• The choices we’re working with here are a block universe, where past, present and future all coexist simultaneously and everything has already happened; chaos, where anything can happen and nothing can be predicted because we can’t know all the variables; and a Christian universe in which God made everything and it’s all here for a purpose but we have free will anyway.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Christian, Block, Past

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• The problem of vindicating an omnipotent and omniscient God in the face of evil is insurmountable. Those who claim to have surmounted it, by recourse to notions of free will and other incoherencies, have merely heaped bad philosophy onto bad ethics.

  Sam Harris

  Philosophy, Evil, Faces

  Sam Harris (2005). “The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason”, p.173, W. W. Norton & Company

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• This error of free will is a special doctrine of the Antichrist.

  Martin Luther

  Errors, Special, Doctrine

  "Grund und Ursach aller Artikel D. Martin Luthers so durch römische Bulle unrechtlich verdammt sind" Article 36 in "D. Martin Luthers Werke: kritische Gesamtausgabe" by Martin Luther, Volume 7, (p. 451), 1897.

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• 

  How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.

  Sam Harris

  Brain, Events, Agents

  Sam Harris (2012). “Free Will”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

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• No just man suffices unto himself for the winning of justification. The divine mercy must always hold out a hand to his footsteps as they falter and almost stumble, and this is so because the weakness of his free will may cause him to lose balance, and if he falls he may perish forever.

  John Cassian

  Christian, Fall, Winning

  John Cassian, Colm Luibhéid (1985). “Conferences”, p.94, Paulist Press

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• And if you believe that we really have free will, then you know that God can't really control us. And since God can't control us, all God does is watch and change channels when He gets bored.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Believe, Bored, Doe

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Invisible Monsters: A Novel”, p.80, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I've only ever met one woman who actually was a prostitute of her own free will. She didn't have a pimp. She could pick and choose her customers. That's so rare.

  Gloria Steinem

  Pimp, Mets, One Woman

  "The Humanist Interview with Gloria Steinem" by Jennifer Bardi, thehumanist.com. August 14, 2012.

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• Free will exists and operates outside causality. It is not hooked to karma. Free will is like a well that is on your property. You can choose to draw water from the well or not.

  Frederick Lenz

  Karma, Water, Causality

  Frederick Lenz (1994). “Surfing the Himalayas: conversations and travels with Master Fwap”, Interglobal Seminars

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• With free will, we can modify, to a certain extent the chain of karma that has been set in motion by the karma of the previous moment. That is what free will really is, the ability to alter the sequence of karmic fate.

  Frederick Lenz

  Karma, Fate, Moments

  Frederick Lenz (1994). “Surfing the Himalayas: conversations and travels with Master Fwap”, Interglobal Seminars

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• There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Unjust, Philosopher, Officers

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.1211, Delphi Classics

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• A man's free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul.

  Augustus Toplady

  Thinking, Power, Men

  Augustus Montague TOPLADY (1837). “The Works of Augustus Toplady ... A New Edition, Complete in One Volume. Printed Verbatim from the First Edition of His Works, 1794”, p.546

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• Satyagraha means insistence on what one knows to be the truth. The insistence implies the exercise of free will as the need of social obligation. If one is content to know the truth himself, he does not become a votary of Satyagraha. A Satyagrahi should not only know the truth but should insist upon it in social relations. So Satyagraha is activation of truthfulness.

  Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

  Mean, Exercise, Atheism

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

  William Shatner

  Destiny, Conundrums

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• A human best, which is very little. Its hard to accept the idea that there cannot be an order in the universe because it would offend the free will of God and His omnipotence. So the freedom of God is our condemnation, or at least the condemnation of our pride.

  Umberto Eco

  Pride, Order, Omnipotence

  Umberto Eco (2014). “The Name of the Rose”, p.528, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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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• 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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• It is not our free will but 'it is the Lord who sets the captive free' (Ps. 145:7). It is not our own virtue but 'it is the Lord who lifts up those who were laid low' (Ps. 145:8). It is not application to reading but 'it is the Lord who gives light to the blind' (Ps. 145:8). It is not our cautiousness but 'it is the Lord who protects the stranger' (Ps. 145:9). It is not our endurance but 'it is the Lord who raises or gives support to the fallen' (Ps. 144:14).

  John Cassian

  Christian, Reading, Light

  John Cassian, Colm Luibhéid (1985). “Conferences”, p.95, Paulist Press

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• How do we receive the highest mystery of Divine love to us ? the mystery of the Christian faith? With our mind, heart and life; with our free will? Are all the three powers of our souls penetrated by holy faith, as were the souls of the saints? The kingdom of heaven 'is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened' (Lk. 13:21). The three measures are the three powers of the soul.

  John of Kronstadt

  Christian, Heart, Heaven

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