philosophy of free will Quotes

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.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.

Of course we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.

We can conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of abuse of free will by His creatures: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when used as a weapon... But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and therefore, freedom of the will would be void.

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.

My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions? Others hold that each decision must be considered and committed to, that without commitment there is chaos. Such people are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.

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!

I've always believed free will is a birthright. God even allows us to choose whether to be led by the divine order

Everybody acts as if they have free will. They act as if they can make these decisions; do they know they don't? I think there's been some back-down on the idea that everything is determined.

Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will....The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.

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.

If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying.

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

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

There is no free will if to exercise it in certain ways produces punishment. That makes a mockery of free will and renders it counterfeit.

You know what's wrong with humanity?... The greatest gift we were given is our free will, and we keep misusing it.

I have come to believe that holy boredom is good and sufficient reason for the invention of free will.

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

Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.

Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds"

For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?

If people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, "Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined that I will get."