Leonard Cohen Quotes

I find it significant that, even though contemporary philosophy tends towards forms of determinism, in the wider culture people are deeply into naming, shaming and blaming each other. So we haven't lost that sense of conscience.

In the traditional view, a person is free. He is autonomous in the sense that his behavior is uncaused. He can therefore be held responsible for what he does and justly punished if he offends. That view, together with its associated practices, must be re-examined when a scientific analysis reveals unsuspected controlling relations between behavior and environment.

Kafka had the sense of guilt. I don't think I have because I don't believe in free will. Because what I have done has been done, well, for me or through me. But I haven't done it really. But I don't believe in free will, I can't feel guilty.

Every person has free choice. Free to obey or disobey the Natural Laws. Your choice determines the consequences. Nobody ever did, or ever will, escape the consequences of his choices.

free will is a theologian's artifice.

I am guilty of one thing - that I should have cleared out and not had anything to do with these criminals in the first place. Later it was too late. I was in up to my neck. But as for the atrocities, I had not a thing to do with them…

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

I did what I did. I went against the grain. And I understand that I would be criticized. Those were all choices.

All sin and all crime comes from the same thing: 'I decided. I decided this was okay.'

Man can and does rationalize his sins. He finds reasons for all his weakness, invents excuses that first calm and then deaden his conscience. He blames God, society, education, and environment for his wrong doing.

I'm not sure I understand how responsibility for our choices makes sense if they are not determined.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

In truth, there is no such thing as a "sinner" for no-one can be sinned against-least of all me.

Tis a human trait to hate one you have wronged

The mind sins, not the body; if there is no intention, there is no blame.

What work do I have to do then?" said Will, but went on at once, "No, on second thought, don't tell me. I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you might say, I'll always be thinking about it. And if I do end up doing that, I'll be resentful because it'll feel as if I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.

To extinguish the free will is to strike the conscience with death, for both have but one and the same life.

Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?

You are free to choose. You are not free not to choose. No choice is a choice. You are free to choose but you are not free to choose the consequences of that choice.

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.

Don't tell me what they did to you as though you had no choice. Tell me, isn't that your picture? Isn't that your voice.

If people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, "Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined that I will get."

We are more pained when one of our friends is guilty of something shameful than when we do it ourselves.

You make the decision: Whom did God punish?

What have I to forgive and whom?