Ugo Betti Quotes

I am not bound to please thee with my answer.

I'm no one's lap dog, you can't put me on a leash.

The man who lets a leader prescribe his course is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think.

When someone forces me to do something I don't do it.

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

It is infinitely easier to suffer in obedience to a human command than to accept suffering as free, responsible men.

Without respect of my private will, you will give me that counsel you think best.

Does our hand show in this?

We must form men so that they can only will what we wish them to will.

I don't like this terminology that you have no choice. You always have a choice.

Choice is destiny's soul mate.

We always have a choice.

You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.

Destiny is a worrying concept. I don't want to be fated, I want to choose.

Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality, an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil.

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.

Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.

The ability to have a choice in what you do is a privilege.

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

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

I don't see success as the goal. Obedience is the goal.

I can't imagine people telling me what to do - I just can't imagine it.