William James Quotes

Intellectually, I believe there's no free will.

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.

His will cannot be neutral or 'free' to act contrary to his nature.

Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.

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

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.

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

The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.

The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.

This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?

I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

Free will I have often heard of, but I have never seen it. I have always met with will, and plenty of it, but it has either been led captive by sin or held in the blessed bonds of grace.

Let that ethical philosophy therefore of free-will be far from a Christian mind.

Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?

My free will is a paradoxical partner of the power of intention.

The Bible puts forth a strong case for no free will and that's a real problem you know, because the justification for supposedly being punished after death is that you had free will. If you didn't have free will and you did what God predetermined, then how can he punish you?"

The doctrine of Necessity or Destiny is the doctrine of Toleration.

The cynics are correct the sense of freewill is only that feeling which we have when we take the necessitated option that most appeals to us.

Human beings, in their thinking, feeling and acting are not free agents but are as causally bound as the stars in their motion.

If the effort also is predestined, it is not the less our effort, made of our free will.

The idea of determinism combined with complete human responsibility struck me as very hard to reconcile with an idea of justice, let alone mercy.

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

I find it significant that, even though contemporary philosophy tends towards forms of determinism, in the wider culture people are deeply into naming, shaming and blaming each other. So we haven't lost that sense of conscience.