Madeleine L'Engle Quotes

I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals.

Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

Libertarians argue that no normal adult has the right to impose choices on other normal adults, except in abnormal circumstances, such as when one person finds another unconscious and administers medical assistance or calls an ambulance.

The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.

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

Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

I still totally believe in individual rights and individual responsibility and in choosing to do good.

The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

My political philosophy as a libertarian says that government has no business intervening in any consensual private behavior. My professional ethic as a thinker and writer, however, says that self-knowledge is our ultimate responsibility

But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There's no godliness there.

Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

There is always a choice." "You mean I could choose certain death?" "A choice nevertheless, or perhaps an alternative. You see I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.

The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.

I've always believed free will is a birthright. God even allows us to choose whether to be led by the divine order

Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

I will not surrender responsibility for my life and my actions.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

I cannot do politics under someone else's control.

The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.