Anthony Burgess Quotes

This means that to man God gave a degree of free will.

The battleline between good and evil runs through the heart of every man.

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

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be either good or evil.

There is no rational creature which is not capable both of good and evil

And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?

It is false that the will, left to itself, can do good as well as evil, for it is not free, but in bondage...On the side of man there is nothing that goes before grace, unless it be impotency and even rebellion.

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

... A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: '- The attempt to impose upon a man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpen-

There's too much tendency to attribute to God the evils that man does of his own 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.

You know, we all can do bad, and we all can do good.

Character and fate are two words for the same thing.

Augustine does not disagree with this when he teaches that it is a faculty of the reason and the will to choose good with the assistance of grace; evil, when grace is absent.

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

I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Is a decision made in advance really any kind of choice.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

If our wondrous kindness is evidence for God, is our capacity for great evil proof of the Devil?

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

Although it is true that by fate all things are forced and linked by a necessary and dominant reason, nevertheless the character of our minds is subject to fate in a manner corresponding to their nature and quality.

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

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.