C. S. Lewis Quotes

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

If God eliminated evil by programming us to perform only good acts, we would lose this distinguishing mark - the ability to make choices. We would no longer be free moral agents. We would be reduced to the status of robots.

Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.

Were there no desire there would be no virtue, and because one man desires what another does not, who shall say whether the child of his desire be Vice or Virtue?

Bur what is Freedom? Rightly understood, A Universal license to be good.

The more...we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

Liberty is the essential precondition for achieving virtue... In order to exercise virtue, we need to have the ability to choose freely.

Knowledge is power. Power to do evil...or power to do good. Power itself is not evil. So knowledge itself is not evil.

There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.

The loss of free will I find unacceptable - what most of us refer to as rights.

It's easy to explain away evil. We have a free choice, and our greatest blessing is also our greatest curse, because I don't always make good choices. Other people make bad choices. I make bad choices. And sometimes we hurt other people. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.

...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.

God's designs may be frequent justification for our actions, but it is we, the self-made men, who take the credit.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

While early childhood experiences may impel, they do not compel. In the end, evil is a matter of choice.

To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.