Victoria Woodhull Quotes

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

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

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

If a motive affects me, and I am compelled to act on it because it proves to be the 'strongest' of its kind, then the thought of freedom ceases to have any meaning. How should it matter to me whether I can do a thing or not, if I am forced by the motive to do it?

A wise man does nothing by constraint.

But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.

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

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

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.

Moral liberty is the power of following, in all circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being controlled by any contrary principles.

Well you don’t have to do it.

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

To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.

Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.

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.

Choices after waking up: To be true or to lie? To take action or be brainwashed? To be free or be jailed?

I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy.

The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.

There is always a choice." "You mean I could choose certain death?" "A choice nevertheless, or perhaps an alternative. You see I believe in freedom. Not many people do, although they will of course protest otherwise. And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.

In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.

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.

It cannot be called freedom, a freedom which can choose only the right and not the wrong; then that is not freedom.

Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able.

I am free to choose my own actions. Indeed, like everyone else, I must be so. A good act that is compelled is not goodness at all, but merely force.

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