Murray Gell-Mann Quotes

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

Necessity has its own rules

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?

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!

I had no choice in the decision to make myself available. I was not always doing things I wanted to do.

I am certainly an ought and not a must.

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

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

Necessity has no law.

What is done from necessity involves neither censure nor applause

Well you don’t have to do it.

Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows--it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.

Need is a low door which, when we must by stern necessity pass through, forces the greatest to bend down the most.

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must.

Necessity relieves us from the embarrassment of choice.

There are rules you follow here not because you want to, but because you have to.

It's punishment to be compelled to do what one doesn't wish.

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man's free will?

It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us.

No one will ever make necessity not happen.

Necessity gives the law and does not itself receive it.

Everything necessarily is or is not, and will be or will not be; but one cannot divide and say that one or the other is necessary.I mean, for example: it is necessary for there to be or not to be a sea-battle tomorrow; but it is not necessary for a sea-battle to take place tomorrow, or for one not to take place--though it is necessary for one to take place or not to take place.

As I've said, freedom is really an illusion. Anytime we think we have a real choice, it just means we haven't seen the shotgun aimed at our navel.