Rudolf Steiner Quotes

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

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

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

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

The fact that the underlying laws of physics are deterministic and impersonal does not mean that at the human level we can't talk about ideas about reasons and goals and purposes and free will.

It must always be remembered that you can never do right until you are first free to do wrong; since the doing of a thing under compulsion is evidence neither of good nor bad intent; and if under compulsion, who shall decide what would be the substituted rule of action under full freedom?

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!

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

He who believes in freedom of the will has never loved and never hated.

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.

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

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

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

A wise man will see to it that his act always seems voluntary and not done be compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.

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

It is never easy to cleanly distinguish freedom and duty, consent and bondage, choice and compulsion.

A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

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?

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.

I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will.

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.

All real freedom springs from necessity, for it can be gained only through the exercise of the individual will, and that will can be roused to energetic action only by the force of necessity acting upon it from the outside to spur it to effort.

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

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