Michael Polanyi Quotes

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.

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

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

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?

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion: some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic.

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

But I don't actually adopt the point of view that our subjective impression of free will, which is a kind of indeterminacy behavior, comes from quantum mechanical indeterminacy.

I have never believed that things happen by themselves.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road

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

We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a determinist. But I also believe that the decisive choice is seldom the latest choice in the series. More often than not, it will turn out to be some choice made relatively far back in the past.

I think people have some control over what they want; there's a relationship - maybe not automatic - between what you want and get.

Though we feel we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets.

I fall down on the side of free will, simply because if you look at where I came from, and what I was able to do in my life, what was able to happen.

In one sense I feel that my book is a one-woman argument against determinism.

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

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

A human being is a deciding being.

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

Do yourself a favor. Don't ever say to me, 'Everything happens for a reason.'

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

Your life is yours to live, no matter how you choose to live it. When you do not think about how you intend to live it, it lives you. When you occupy it, step into it consciously, you live it.

Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.