Paracelsus Quotes

A wise man shall overrule his stars, and have a greater influence upon his own content than all the constellations and planets of the firmament.

Every high C accurately struck demolishes the theory that we are the irresponsible puppets of fate or chance.

Diminish the influence of fate

I think many people are terribly afraid of being demoted by the Darwinian scheme from the role of authors and creators in their own right into being just places where things happen in the universe.

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

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.

I think 'destiny' is just a fancy word for a psychological pattern.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

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.

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

I'm all for past influences; the question is whether they are deterministic. Freud and the behaviorists argue that what we are at any given moment is billiard balls whose past determines our future course. That doesn't take into account that we are forever generating internal representations of positive futures and choosing among them.

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

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

Does our hand show in this?

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

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.

A world grows up around me. Am I shaping it, or do its predetermined contours guide my hand?

People behave agentically, but they produce theories that afford people very little agency.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him.

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

i realize that the future, though invisible, has weight. We are in the gravitational pull of past and future. It takes huge energy -speed of light power- to break the gravitational pull. How many of us ever get free of our orbit? We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives. We believe we can be our own miracles, and just a lottery win or Mr.right will make the world new.

For man is not the creature and product of Mechanism; but, in a far truer sense, its creator and producer.

You are free to do what you want, but you are not free to want what you want.