Free Will Quotes

He won all those medals in the Second World War, which was staged by robots so that Dwayne Hoover could give a free-will reaction to such a holocaust. The war was such an extravaganza that there was scarcely a robots anywhere who didn't have a part to play. Harold Newcomb Wilbur got his medals for killing Japanese, who were yellow robots. They were fueled by rice. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Free will is located in or near the anterior cingulate sulcus. ~ Francis Crick

Life is a compromise between fate and free will. ~ Elbert Hubbard

how we think of free will. While we all think that we first plan our actions and that they are then willfully carried out, in some cases a part of our frontal lobe may actually "decide" first, unconsciously, that we will perform an act, and after we carry out the act we fool ourselves into thinking we planned it. ~ James Fallon

Free will is a gift, not a burden ~ Stephan Attia

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

You want to know what I believe? I believe in fate, but I also believe in free will. Meaning, there's a path, but we're free to veer away from it. The only problem is that there's no way to know whose path we're following on any given moment. Our own? Our fate's? Other people are on their on paths, too. What happens when we intersect? What happens when someone else wipes our path clean, and we're left with no road to follow? Is that fate? Is that when free will kicks in? Is the path there, but invisible?
Who the hell knows? ~ Brigid Kemmerer

You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you. ~ Lisa See

Determinism gives you the freedom to do whatever you like. ~ Raheel Farooq

The forces of good and evil are working within and around me, I must choose, and in a free will universe I do have a choice. ~ Martin Luther

So our future is in our own hands. What greater free will do we need? ~ Dalai Lama

The choice to believe is yours. It's the only thing that truly is. ~ J.S.B. Morse

I wasn't angry with God that I lost my husband. I was devastated; I was broken. I still am, in many ways. But I feel like God gives free will to everyone, and people who want to choose evil, they have that same free will. ~ Taya Kyle

If all men have "free will" and yet all without exception are under God's wrath, then it follows that "free will" leads them in only one direction - "ungodliness and unrighteousness" (i.e., wickedness). So where is the power of "free will" helping them to do good? If "free will" exists, it does not seem to be able to help men to salvation because it still leaves them under the wrath of God. ~ Martin Luther

You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man-break the fetters! ~ Halldor Laxness

journeying through the fields of evil is the price we pay for free will, ~ Dean Koontz

To the best of our scientific understanding, determinism and randomness have divided the entire cake between them, leaving not even a crumb for 'freedom'. The sacred word 'freedom' turns out to be, just like 'soul', an empty term that carries no discernible meaning. Free will exists only in the imaginary stories we humans have invented. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

And if he left me of his own free will, then he should get ready for the bitch-slapping of his life. ~ L.J.Smith

Freedom of will is born from the neurons. And that freedom allows you to sometimes make even the worst decisions ever in your life. And by making the worst decision, you simply learn what would be the better decision in future. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Stress can alter the expression of genes, which can affect the response to stress and so on. Human behavior is therefore unpredictable in the short term, but broadly predictable in the long term. ~ Matt Ridley

Free will exists so free will can be given up freely. Such a person feels

no genuine delight if he or she is not drained empty. With all the delicious food and drink

in the world, true pleasure comes only with the extinction of pleasure and its replacement by

soul delight.

Those who have gone through fana into baqa, through annihilation into

that which has always been, become all body and all consciousness. With dissolving

begins some overwhelming joy. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key. ~ Haruki Murakami

I am trying to imagine under what novel features despotism may appear in the world. In the first place, I see an innumerable multitude of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each one of them, withdrawn into himself, is almost unaware of the fate of the rest….

Over this kind of men stands an immense, protective power which is alone responsible for securing their enjoyment and watching over their fate. That power is absolute, thoughtful of detail, orderly, provident, and gentle. It would resemble parental authority if, fatherlike, it tried to prepare charges for a man's life, but on the contrary, it only tries to keep them in perpetual childhood. It likes to see the citizens enjoy themselves, provided that they think of nothing but enjoyment. It gladly works for their happiness but wants to be sole agent and judge of it. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasure, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, makes rules for their testaments, and divides their inheritances. Why should it not entirely relieve them from the trouble of thinking and all the cares of living?

Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepare ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

We are automata entirely controlled by the forces of the medium being tossed about like corks on the surface of the water, but mistaking the resultant of the impulses from the outside for free will. The movements and other actions we perform are always life preservative and tho seemingly quite independent from one another, we are connected by invisible links ~ Nikola Tesla

What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past? ~ Sam Harris

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

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

The answer can only be that God has given Adam free will, and therefore Adam may do things that God Himself cannot anticipate in advance. ~ Margaret Atwood

After all, we may grant that a program running in a computer can reason, can perform elaborate mathematical computations, can play chess better than a human champion, can beat humans in TV game shows, can translate speech, and can even drive vehicles, but we would still be hard pressed to believe that a program with those abilities has free will, that it is selfconscious, that it has the concept of self, and that it fears its own death. ~ Arlindo Oliveira

It seems to me that the term 'free will' is one of the most manipulated and exploited terms. The real explanation of free will is not that you have free will but that your will can eventually make you free, that will can liberate you, that will can release you from slavery. ~ Torkom Saraydarian

I fall down on the side of free will, simply because if you look at where I came from, and what I was able to do in my life, what was able to happen. ~ Dean Koontz

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

Free will." Cam shrugged. "It's all the rage these days. ~ Lauren Kate

If you choose to draw from the inner well of free will, then you can make choices that are outside your current karmic patterns. ~ Frederick Lenz

Free will is the thing you have to have if you're going to be responsible in this all-or-nothing way. That's what I mean by free will. That's what I think we haven't got and can't have. ~ Galen Strawson

Was I not mad, after all, for journeying to this place, of my own free will? "And all for what? Original lust? Die before trying as a matter of trust, I see with staked hands a man before us, who fixes, and features and burrows a bribe, like a Pallas Athene, a winter-crossed bride. ~ Benjamin Robert Carrico

God works on your behalf to help you meet and love other people. However, you determine whom you accept and whom you reject. As you interact with another single adult, you have the freedom to decide which direction your relationship will take. You can choose to become romantic with someone, be friends only, or end your time together. In addition, the other person also has free will say in the matter, which means he or she gets to influence the outcome as well. Consequently, a relationship will not exist unless both of you decide to love each other. If you or the other person make sinful decisions, your social life can be impaired. ~ Rob Eagar

Gradually, however, i grew accustomed to this too. I grew accustomed to everything, that is, i didn't actually grow accustomed but somehow agreed of my own free will to grin and bear it. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Human free will implies God's prior decision not to tamper with the metaphysical base of that free will. It also implies man's ability to reject the persuasion God uses to influence that free will while leaving its metaphysical base intact! Persuasion, not compulsion, is what even He must rely upon! And persuasion, by its very definition, must be resistible! ~ Don Richardson

God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will. By this thunderbolt, "Free-will" is thrown prostrate, and utterly dashed to pieces. ~ Martin Luther

Anything that comes your way by force was not meant for you. Everything that locates you on it's own was yours and will be yours forever. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Where is the freedom in being perfectly satisfied with your thoughts, intentions, and subsequent actions when they are the product of prior events that you had absolutely no hand in creating? ~ Sam Harris

But we understand our liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiary values that help realize opportunity - all those homespun virtues that Benjamin Franklin first popularized in Poor Richard's Almanack and that have continued to inspire our allegiance through successive generations. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.
These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will - a confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above the circumstances of our birth. But these values also express a broader confidence that so long as individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests, society as a whole will prosper. ~ Barack Obama

Please don't make me kill you!" Her face twists in panic. "I can't be your slave again, Joshua. I can't! Just leave!"
"You won't be my slave." I'm almost on her. I reach for the gun.
She shoots me in the foot, then screams in surprise at what she's done.
Instantly, I compartmentalize the pain. And I glory in the fact that she couldn't find the strength to kill me.
I lunge forward and snatch the gun from her hand. I wrap my arms around her as she howls and cries.
"Tamara. It will be different. I want you to come with me right now, I want you to stay with me of your own free will."
"Never!" she howls. And the pain of it squeezes my heart.
This is what heartbreak feels like. No wonder people whine and cry about it so much. It's vile. It makes me angry and sick to my stomach. It makes me want to kill people ~ Ginger Talbot

Freedom of the will is a psychological fiction. ~ Louis Berkhof

A plot, I used to remind my students, is not merely a sequence of events: "A" followed by "B" followed by "C" followed by "D." Rather, it's a series of events linked by cause and effect: "A" causes "B," which causes "C," and so on. True, a person's (or a fictional character's) destiny may be more than the sum of his choices
fate and luck play a role as well
but only scientists (and not all of them) believe that free will is a sham. People in life
and therefore in fiction
must choose, and their choices must have meaningful consequences. Otherwise, there's no story. ~ Richard Russo

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

I don't. We each have free will. There may be higher purpose, but the actual path each of us takes to get there, and whether we choose to accept it at all, is up to us." She turns to me. "If you can't let go of that fear of making the wrong decision, you will never be able to take the chances you must take to live life fully. ~ Pam Jenoff

To explain the matter I will employ a simile, which yet, I confess is very dissimilar; but its dissimilitude is greatly in favour of my sentiments. A rich man bestows, on a poor and famishing beggar, alms by which he may be able to maintain himself and his family. Does it cease to be a pure gift, because the beggar extends his hand to receive it? Can it be said with propriety, that 'the alms depended partly on THE LIBERALITY of the Donor, and partly on THE LIBERTY of the Receiver,' though the latter would not have possessed the alms unless he had received it by stretching out his hand? Can it be correctly said, BECAUSE THE BEGGAR IS ALWAYS PREPARED TO RECEIVE, that 'he can have the alms, or not have it, just as he pleases?' If these assertions cannot be truly made about a beggar who receives alms, how much less can they be made about the gift of faith, for the receiving of which far more acts of Divine Grace are required! ~ James Arminius

Humans have free will. Free will is the ability to make irrational decisions. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Your personal will is the web your disease sits and spins in. The will you call your own ceased to be yours as of who knows how many Substance-drenched years ago. ~ David Foster Wallace

This woman comes of her own free will out of love for this man. And with the support and love of her family. ~ Tracy Solheim

Man must have free-will to choose his own path, or else his heart will wither away. And a man without a heart has nothing to live for. ~ K.L. Hagaman

Tonight, however, all I can think of is the juxtaposition of destiny and free will, and whether it makes no difference what I do, or all the difference in the world. ~ Laurie Viera Rigler

In a universe in which past, present, and future came into existence all at once, complete from beginning to end, with all possible outcomes of every life woven through the tapestry, there is no chance, only choice, no luck, but only consequences. ~ Dean Koontz

One of the greatest gifts that God has given us is free will. Even though it's free, we don't take advantage of it as much as we could when it comes to matters of the heart. ~ Niecy Nash

Nothing can enslaved us, if we free in our minds. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The purpose of life is to survive,to grow,to accept and adapt changes that happens...And addition to human is to exercise his free will, to learn from experience,to make the most of his time,to live well and to reap what he sow in this life. ~ Balenti Peco Ramos

Stubbornness is knowing exactly what you want courageously living by free will; never to be judged or ridiculed. ~ Michelle Cruz-Rosado

The future is just a projection of the past. ~ Vivake Pathak

The principles of Islam teach us to be messengers of peace - to be like water, gentle enough to wash away tears and strong enough to drown hatred. To be Muslim is to protect the weak, the orphan, the beggar, the disabled of all races and cultures. To be Muslim is not to be color-blind, but to see the differences between people and to celebrate that diversity as a product of the free will that God chose to give us. As the Qur'an says, "And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed, in that are signs for those of knowledge" (30:22) ~ A. Helwa

The magic was a tool, though a natural, mysterious tool. In its awareness of the magic, his human nature had desired to connect with it, to use it. The whisperings were the voice of his own awakening, not the seductive call of a dark power. Using it was not corruption, but a natural extension of his being. And he could control the manner in which he used it. He would. ~ Derek Donais

I am passionate about the things that I believe in like equality, free will, justice and love. ~ Trish Kaye Lleone

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

Meg," he whispered. "It wouldn't be real love if there weren't the possibility for another response to him. If we couldn't choose not to love him, then our love would be empty. That's why there's evil in this world, because there's free choice in this world. He allows the one to prove the other. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man's will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so. ~ A.W. Tozer

It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us. ~ Tertullian

Free will is not given to us merely as a firework to be shot off into the air. There are some men who seem to think their acts are freer in proportion as they are without purpose, as if a rational purpose imposed some kind of limitation upon us. That is like saying that one is richer if he throws money out the window than if he spends it. ~ Thomas Merton

I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not! ~ Raymond Smullyan

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

A predator is what you are, and nothing you can do will change that. But being a killer is a choice you make. That's the dilemma of free will. You can't change your nature, but you can decide how to act on it. ~ Obie Williams

The thoughts of a prisoner - they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest? ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Prison life taught him how little one can get along with, and what extraordinary spiritual freedom and peace such simplification can bring. I remember again, ironically, that today more of us in the world have the luxury of choice between simplicity and complication of life. And for the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication. War, prison, survival periods, enforce a form of simplicity on us. The monk and the nun choose it of their own free will. But if one accidentally finds it, as I have for a few days, one finds also the serenity it brings. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

When I look back on my life I come to one simple conclusion: there exists an intelligent, loving Presence in the Cosmos that will ultimately have its desire for relationship with us fulfilled; even our arrogant dismissal of its existence will not stop it in its tracks. The Enlightenment's god, the great idol of free will, lies smashed in pieces in its wake. The jealous Presence patiently draws us homeward like some gigantic electromagnetic beam. The Death Star in reverse. This divinity is, I believe, the 'Abba' of Jesus, a transcendence that will not be boxed in by religious misrepresentation... ~ Dylan Morrison

There is not one certain future, that much i know. Each of our lives creates what is to come. The universe is not a clock that has been set to run in one direction. It is a maze, a giant puzzle that changes and grows each time a player takes one path over another. Every time you make a choice, you make the future. ~ Brittney Ryan

As free as you allow others to be, such freedom you create for yourself. ~ Bryant McGill

I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will. ~ Richard Dawkins

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads.

Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.

Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows?

...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is no ~ Clarence Darrow

I condemn false prophets, I condemn the effort to take away the power of rational decision, to drain people of their free will - and a hell of a lot of money in the bargain. Religions vary in their degree of idiocy, but I reject them all. For most people, religion is nothing more than a substitute for a malfunctioning brain. ~ Gene Roddenberry

It is a disturbing conundrum that true free will cannot exist without the possibility of suicide. Then again, it ain't over 'til it's over! ~ Yogi Berra

In your daily life, you make dozens of chooses between an alternative with higher overall value and a more tempting but ultimately inferior option. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The contingency of history (both for life in general and for the cultures of Homo sapiens ) and human free will (in the factual rather than theological sense) are conjoined concepts, and no better evidence can be produced than the "experimental" production of markedly different solutions in identical environments. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will. ~ James Lileks

It is the Godfather, not God the Father, who makes you an offer you can't refuse. ~ Peter Kreeft

More-radical scholars insist that an inherent clash exists between science and our long-held conceptions about consciousness and moral agency: if you accept that our brains are a myriad of smaller components, you must reject such notions as character, praise, blame, and free will. ~ Paul Bloom

...only the one who knows and practices the iconoclastic fury of destruction can possess the joy born of freedom, of that unique freedom fertilized by sorrow. I rise up against the reality of the outer world for the triumph of the reality of my inner world. I reject society for the triumph of the I. I reject the stability of every rule, every custom, every morality, for the affirmation of every willful instinct, all free emotionality, every passion and every fantasy. I mock at every duty and every right so I can sing free will. I scorn the future to suffer and enjoy my good and my bad in the present. I despise humanity because it is not my humanity. I hate tyrants and I detest slaves. I don't want and I don't grant solidarity, because I am convinced that it is a new chain, and because I believe with Ibsen that the one who is most alone is the strongest one. This is my Nihilism. ~ Renzo Novatore

God gave us free will so that we might choose our own destinies. He left it up to us to achieve them. ~ R.M. ArceJaeger

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

I'm sick and tired of people saying that taking drugs is a sickness. When you put something of your own free will in your own body knowing that it's harmful against the body, it's against the law and all it will do is lead you down the path of destruction, that is a weakness. ~ Tommy Lasorda

To truly give them free will, you can't interfere. You must let them choose their own path, even if that path takes them from you, ~ Melody Anne

Beth: "I don't think you realize what you're dealing with here. You can't just mess around with the forces of the universe!"
Xavier: "What ever happened to free will? Or was that just a myth? ~ Alexandra Adornetto

My destiny plays with me in such a way
I feel I play with my destiny. ~ Vivake Pathak

We actually tried Free Will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman Empire we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the Dark Ages for five centuries... until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought maybe we just needed to do a better job of teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason, then in 1910 we stepped back. Within fifty years, you'd brought us World War I, the Depression, Fascism, the Holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that point a decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix. You don't have free will, David. You have the appearance of free will."

(Agent Thompson's response to David Norris when asked "What ever happened to free will?") ~ Philip K. Dick

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

The same way a compact disk isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's how we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a dollar bill ~ Chuck Palahniuk

If a man's free will to adopt ideas and values is inalienable, his freedom of action - his freedom to put these ideas into effect in the world - is not in such a fortunate condition. ~ Murray Rothbard

One doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others." "This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything ... nor ought one to blame others. ~ Charles Darwin

The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds. ~ William James

Everything happens through immutable laws, ... everything is necessary ... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason. ~ Voltaire

It is the will of God that we live not only as rational beings, but as 'new men' regenerated by the Holy Spirit in Christ. It is His will that we reach out for our inheritance, that we answer His call to be His sons. We are born men without our consent, but the consent to be sons of God has to be elicited by our own free will. ~ Thomas Merton