Rene Magritte Quotes

If there is such a thing as freedom, then there is no fate.

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

Does our hand show in this?

Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe ? Another act of willing?

In order not to annul our free will, I judge it true that Fortune may be mistress of one half our actions but then even she leaves the other half, or almost, under our control.

God's is the causality at the level of our being, and therefore the roots of our freedom. Ours in causality is determinative of what kind of being we're going to be through our free choices, what kind of action we are going to do through our decisions.

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.

When we think the universe moves. When we think we actually cause things to happen.

I would like to think there is a reason and a choice behind everything.

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

We are no more free agents than the queen of clubs when she victoriously takes prisoner the knave of hearts.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity.

If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.

Men are the sport of circumstances when it seems circumstances are the sport of men.

Events are not a matter of chance.

I have never believed that things happen by themselves.

If I were to adopt pure mechanism as a philosophy, there would be no way I could choose to be a scholar.

Man blindly works the will of fate.

We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.

All theory is against freedom of the will, all experience for it.

Intellectually, I believe there's no free will.

I let one thing result from another. Of course, all of it could have been just loosely connected coincidences. And whether that's true or not, I know the intention was there. Becasue when I want something to happen-or not happen- I begin to look at all events and all things as relevant, an opportunity to take or avoid.

From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.

I come down on the side of free will but I have sympathy for those who believe in fate because there is something about life which we feel we have no control over.