Richard Whately Quotes

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.

A human being is a deciding being.

Reason is the historian, but passions are the actors.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

A man has free choice to the extent that he is rational.

Reason also is choice.

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 power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.

INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

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

Reason guides but a small part of man, and the rest obeys feeling, true or false, and passion, good or bad.

It is the ability to choose which makes us human.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.

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

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

It must always be remembered that you can never do right until you are first free to do wrong; since the doing of a thing under compulsion is evidence neither of good nor bad intent; and if under compulsion, who shall decide what would be the substituted rule of action under full freedom?

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

[R]eason is... given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that influences the will.

My behavior is a product of my own conscious choices based on principles, rather than a product of my conditions, based on feelings.

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?

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

Each human being has been granted a virtue: the capacity to choose. For he who does not use this virtue, it becomes a curse - and others will always choose for him.