Ambrose Bierce Quotes

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

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.

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

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

To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.

I suppose that the great questions of "Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge Absolute," which used to be discussed at Concord, are still unsettled.

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.

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.

Ethical and questions of philosophy interest me a great deal.

God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause.

How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?

Do freshman philosophy classes nowadays debate updated versions of the age-old questions? Like, how could a merciful God allow AIDS, childhood cancers, tsunamis and Dick Cheney?

Free will is to mind, what chance is to matter

The more...we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good

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

Intellectually, I believe there's no free will.

This is plainly to ascribe divinity to 'free will.'

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

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

I come down on the side of free will but I have sympathy for those who believe in fate because there is something about life which we feel we have no control over.

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

Every unjust man is unjust against his will.

If you could stand back far enough and watch the whole process you'd see you are a totally determined being.

As does every young man studying philosophy, I naturally asked myself questions about the truth of all this, and about the meaning of freedom, predestination, and liberty of choice and so on. But to have asked questions of yourself about it, I think is not too important. Let's say - I remain - I remained a believer.

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