Thomas Reid Quotes

Every one knows that the heavenly bodies move in certain paths in relation to each other with seeming consistency and regularity which we call [physical] law. ... No one attributes freewill or motive to the material world. Is the conduct of man or the other animals any more subject to whim or choice than the action of the planets? ... We know that man's every act is induced by motives that led or urged him here or there; that the sequence of cause and effect runs through the whole universe, and is nowhere more compelling than with man.

The pull, the attraction of history, is in our human nature. What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How much is luck the deciding factor?

Human beings do things for a reason, even if sometimes it's the wrong reason.

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

I used to very politely say that if there is free will then it's in all sorts of boring places, like whether you're going to pick up this or that fork as you begin your meal. There really is none: It's all biology.

Every choice you make has a consequence, every one. It's mathematic. It cannot fail; it never fails.

But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.

Everything in nature goes by law, and not by luck.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.

We make choices and are in turn made by them.

Either in or out of time, the decision of a personal agency to commit an action happens antecedent to the action itself. Even if the deciding and the acting happened simultaneously, it would still not be true that the acting was antecedent to the deciding. Imagine God saying, "Oh, look! I just created a universe. Now I'd better decide to do it.

But with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this;-we can perceive that events are brought about, not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular ease, but by the establishment of general laws.

If there really is a complete unified theory that governs everything, it presumably also determines your actions. But it does so in a way that is impossible to calculate for an organism that is as complicated as a human being. The reason we say that humans have free will is because we can't predict what they will do.

To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.

Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions; do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down on the idea that everything is determined.

Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.

Man is the product of two forces, action and reaction, which make him think.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

The deepest, the intelligible, part of the nature of man is that part which does not take refuge in causality, but which chooses in freedom the good or the bad.

Everything is exactly as it is for a reason. The crumb on your table is no mystical reminder of this morning's cookie, it is there because you have chosen not to remove it. No exceptions.

Every tomorrow is determined by every today.

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.

I shall attempt to prove two things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of any original determination that they bring into the world; and, secondly, that the great stream of our voluntary actions essentially depends, not upon the direct and immediate impulses of sense, but upon the decisions of the understanding.

A Deed knocks first at Thought And then - it knocks at Will - That is the manufacturing spot.