Voltaire Quotes

But to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question of metaphysics, the most contentious science.

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

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

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.

Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity, save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?

Freedom is the recognition of necessity

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

Intellectually, I believe there's no free will.

If we have free will, by definition we cannot be granted it. We can't be given it. My [-audio-recording-distorted-] paradox states that 'Of course we have free will, we have no choice.' To say that it's a gift is to negate the whole concept of free will on its face. So, if that isn't self-evident, I can't think of anything that would meet the definition of being self-evident.

Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.

From my point of view, compatibilism is a little like saying: a puppet is free so long as it loves its strings.

Further conceive, I beg, that a stone, while continuing in motion, should be capable of thinking and knowing, that it is endeavoring, as far as it can, to continue to move. Such a stone, being conscious merely of its own endeavor and not at all indifferent, would believe itself to be completely free, and would think that it continued in motion solely because of its own wish. This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.

The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills.

Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

Even the absolute universality of the law of causality does not necessarily limit a person's freedom, because the law of causality not only enables him to explain the past and predict the future, but also encourages him to use his intelligence to create new causes and attain new results.

Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.

For, above all, I hold a notion of possibility and necessity according to which there are some things that are possible, but yet not necessary, and which do not really exist. From this it follows that a reason that always forces a free mind to choose one thing over another (whether that reason derives from the perfection of a thing, as it does in God, or from our imperfection) does not eliminate our freedom.

This is what writers mean when they say that the notion of cause involves the idea of necessity. If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be, whatever supposition we may make in regard to all other things.

History is a realm in which human freedom and natural necessity are curiously intermingled.

Gravity works in your life, the notion of free will works in your life, however problematic it may at times be.

Skepticism is unbelief in cause and effect.

The apprehension of necessity is an imitation of creation.

All things happen by virtue of necessity.

A significant idea of organization cannot be obtained in a world in which everything is necessary and nothing is contingent.

Two times two will be four even without my will. Is that what you call man's free will?