Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Well you don’t have to do it.

We are unable to recognize the laws of necessity if we believe we are free

What is done from necessity involves neither censure nor applause

It is never easy to cleanly distinguish freedom and duty, consent and bondage, choice and compulsion.

A wise man does nothing by constraint.

Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.

Man is pre-eminently endowed with the power of voluntarily and consciously determining his own point of view.

By the will art thou lost, by the will art thou found, by the will art thou free, captive, and bound.

Play is always voluntary. What might otherwise be play is work if it's forced.

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

You don't ever have to feel pushed into anything.

It must always be remembered that you can never do right until you are first free to do wrong; since the doing of a thing under compulsion is evidence neither of good nor bad intent; and if under compulsion, who shall decide what would be the substituted rule of action under full freedom?

I have never believed that man's freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.

He who believes in freedom of the will has never loved and never hated.

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

We must believe in free will, we have no choice.

If I decide to be indecisive, that's my decision.

Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.

I am not unconscious of the persuasive power exerted by these considerations to drag men along in the current; but I am not at liberty to travel that road.

Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.

If you are not happy with the song, don't sing it. Simple as that - no-one forces you to do it.

I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.

The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose.