Free Will Quotes - Page 5

Fate would have no divinity if we were wise: it is we who make her a goddess and place her in heaven.

The concept of Free Will makes no sense unless associated, somehow or the other, with Absolute Determinism; it is just as a man cannot walk without gravity arresting and spurring his pace simultaneously.

Raheel Farooq

Most people live life on the path we set for them. Too afraid to explore any other. But once in a while people like you come along and knock down all the obstacles we put in your way. People who realize free will is a gift, you'll never know how to use until you fight for it.

the adjustment bureau

Who can ever know what path to walk on when all of them are either crooked or broken? One just has to walk.

Ishmael Beah

Strange how reluctant I was to acknowledge that control of my fate lay beyond my own conscious will. Habit of a lifetime, I suppose.

Patrick McGrath

The single word that directs a person’s fate and ultimately the fates of those she comes in contact with is of course a common subject of entertainments and moralizing stories, but if everyone were to consider all the possible consequences of all one’s possible choices, no one would move a millimeter, or even dare to breathe for fear of the ultimate results.

Ann Leckie

I've been coerced into free will.

Brian Spellman

There is no fate, only free will, and we were just in the way of other people's free will when they decided to do the Devil's work.

Dean Koontz

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

Martin Luther King Jr.

You can change the road you take, but sometimes it can bend back to lead you straight to that same stubborn fate.

Dean Koontz

Fate isn't a straight road," I said, becoming the oracle that earlier in the day I had declined to be for her. "There are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.

Dean Koontz

Fate is a woman, I said to them. In fact, she is three women. Young, like us, so that they will have the courage to be cruel, having no weight of memory to teach temperance. Young, but so old, older than any stone. Their hair is silver, but full and long. Their eyes are black. But when they are at their work they become dogs, wolves, for they are hounds of death, and also hounds of joy. They take the strands of life in their jaws, and sometimes they are careful with their jagged teeth, and sometimes they are not. They gallop around a great monolith, the stone that pierces our Sphere where the meridians meet, that turns the Earth and pins it in place in the world. It is called the Spindle of Necessity, and all round it the wolves of fate run, and run, and run, and the patterns of their winding are the patterns of the world. Nothing can occur without them, but they take no sides. I could also say that there is such a stone, such a place, but the dogs who are women died long ago, and left the strands to fall, and we have been helpless ever since. That in a wolfless world we must find our own way. That is more comforting to me. I want my own way, I want to falter; I want to fail, and I want to be redeemed. All these things I want to spool out from the spindle that is me, not the spindle of the world. But I have heard both tales.

Catherynne M. Valente

Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and I have not the strength.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

SOSTRATUS: Observe then your injustice! You punish us who are but the slaves of Clotho's bidding, and reward these, who do but minister to another's beneficence. For it will never be said that it was in our power to gainsay the irresistible ordinances of Fate?MINOS: Ah, Sostratus; look closely enough, and you will find plenty of inconsistencies besides these. However, I see you are no common pirate, but a philosopher in your way; so much you have gained by your questions. Let him go, Hermes; he shall not be punished after that. But mind, Sostratus, you must not put it into other people's heads to ask questions of this kind.

Lucian of Samosata

The truth is, our parents are but part of the equation that forms us―because the only thing more powerful than fate is free will.

Romina Russell

If free will means to do what you want, then it does not exist. Many of its staunchest proponents have met the wheel of fate without opposing it

Bangambiki Habyarimana

You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you.

Lisa See

Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.

Herman Melville

We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?

Elizabeth Gilbert

Faith itself is an act of human willing enabled and disciplined by grace.

Thomas C. Oden

The will has no overall purpose, aims at no highest good, and can never be satisfied. Although it is our essence, it strikes us as an alien agency within, striving for life and procreation blindly, mediated only secondarily by consciousness. Instinctive sexuality is at our core, interfering constantly with the life of the intellect. To be an individual expression of this will is to lead a life of continual desire, deficiency, and suffering. Pleasure or satisfaction exists only relative to a felt lack; it is negative, merely the cessation of an episode of striving or suffering, and has no value of itself. Nothing we can achieve by conscious act of will alters the will to life within us. There is no free will. Human actions, as part of the natural order, are determined [....] As individual parts of the empirical world we are ineluctably pushed through life by a force inside us which is not of our choosing, which gives rise to needs and desires we can never fully satisfy, and is without ultimate purpose. Schopenhauer concludes that it would have been better not to exist—and that the world itself is something whose existence we should deplore rather than celebrate.

Christopher Janaway

Most of us assume that human beings have free will. However, . . . [we] are very much conditioned by our species, culture, family, and by the past in general. . . . It is rare for a human being to have free will. . . . (140)

Ravi Ravindra

Free will, determinism, meaning, existence, etc. are academic problems, not problems in life.

Marty Rubin

Our sense of being a conscious agent who does things comes at a cost of being technically wrong all the time.

Daniel M. Wegner

Because of Jesus’ supposed predestination, God would have had to choose the people who would kill and betray his son, choose the method by which he would be killed (crucifixion), and the time at which the event would occur. Those guilty of killing Jesus would therefore be simply carrying out God’s wishes without the free will to have chosen a path for themselves.

David G. McAfee

The sin both of men and of angels, was rendered possible by the fact that God gave us free will.

C.S. Lewis

Some decisions in life naturally lead to an unhappy ending, leaving you sinking by degrees in a lake of quicksand. And, unless someone reaches to pull you out, chances are you will drown in the consequences.

Richelle E. Goodrich

Happiness is a choice, To make a choice is utilizing your freewill to choose. Courage is getting out of your own way to let Happiness happen in your life in Abundance!

Sereda Aleta Dailey

Kuan Yin is showing me picture of a windsurfer skimming effortlessly along the ocean's surface," describes Ms. Lees. "While quite skilled, he is nevertheless very focused on the elements around him. The windsurfer is focused upon how to turn the sail. His question must always be, 'what am I going to do with the wind that is blowing right now,'" instructs Kuan Yin: “There are the waves and there is the wind, seen and unseen forces. Everyone has these same elements in their lives, the seen and unseen: karma and free will. The question is, ‘how are you going to handle what you have?’ You are riding the karmic wave underneath and the wind can shift. Everyone must take what they see and deal with that which is unseen.

Hope Bradford

No one can control his own opinion or his own belief. My belief was forced upon me by my surroundings. I am the product of all circumstances that have in any way touched me.

Robert G. Ingersoll

Our fated untainted soul gives us free reign, only doth backward pull our clouded minds when we ourselves falsely protect from pain.

Truth Devour

The choice to believe is yours. It’s the only thing that truly is.

J.S.B. Morse

The most purely free decision one can make—and thus, the highest order of spirit on Earth—is believing in something without evidential knowledge.

J.S.B. Morse

My method is atheism. I find the atheistic outlook provides a favourable background for cosmopolitan practices. Acceptance of atheism at once pulls down caste and religious barriers between man and man. There is no longer a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian. All are human beings. Further, the atheistic outlook puts man on his legs. There is neither divine will nor fate to control his actions. The release of free will awakens Harijans [lowest caste] and the depressed classes from the stupor of inferiority into which they were pressed all these ages when they were made to believe that they were fated to be untouchables. So I find the atheistic outlook helpful for my work [helping people]. After all it is man that created god to make society moral and to silence restless inquisitiveness about the how and why of natural phenomena. Of course god was useful though a falsehood. But like all falsehoods, belief in god also gave rise to many evils in course of time and today it is not only useless but harmful to human progress. So I take to the propagation of atheism as an aid to my work. The results justify my choice.

Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

In a universe in which past, present, and future came into existence all at once, complete from beginning to end, with all possible outcomes of every life woven through the tapestry, there is no chance, only choice, no luck, but only consequences.

Dean Koontz

Aren’t you at all curious about your past?” Rhys asked.“No, my present is who I am. Your identity is whoever you choose to be, not who your parents were.”“But as a scientist you know that prior events influence it, and the future.”“In physics, yes. In people, no.

Jeffrey Perren

Zombies are familiar characters in philosophical thought experiments. They are like people in every way except they have no internal experience.... If there are enough zombies recruited into our world, I worry about the potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if people pretend they are not conscious or do not have free will - or that the cloud of online people is a person; if they pretend there is nothing special about the perspective of the individual - then perhaps we have the power to make it so. We might be able to collectively achieve antimagic. Humans are free. We can commmit suicide for the benefit of a Singularity. We can engineer our genes to better support an imaginary hive mind. We can make culture and journalism into second-rate activities and spend centuries remixing the detritus of the 1960s and other eras from before individual creativity went out of fashion. Or we can believe in ourselves. By chance, it might turn out we are real.

Jaron Lanier

Creation and Free Will are constantly moving, hand in hand, like children traveling along a path full of impulses and inspirations.Through the use of the Dragonflame philosophy they become superior artistic beings able to enjoy and share the fruits of creative labor.

Lawren Leo

Destiny is variable, not fixed; it is forever changing depending upon your free will to make choices for what you want your life to be.

Steven Redhead

Choices are powerful things. In fact, they’re more powerful than most things.

Amy Neftzger

Every life is a mystery. And every story of every life is a mystery. But it is not what happens that is the mystery. It is whether it has to happen no matter what, whether it is ordered and ordained, fixed and fated, or whether it can be missed, avoided, circumvented, passed by; that is the mystery.If she had not come along the Via Piemonte that day, would it still have happened? If she had come along the Via Piemonte that day, but ten minutes later than she did, would it still have happened? Therein lies the real mystery. And no one ever knows, and no one ever will.("For The Rest Of Her Life")

Cornell Woolrich

Failing to meet your true destiny is a tragic act of free will.

Anthon St. Maarten

Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.

Anthon St. Maarten

My destiny plays with me in such a wayI feel I play with my destiny.

Vivake Pathak

With every sunrise, we get to choose ... who we are, what we believe, and how we will live the life the gods have given us. We can’t always choose our circumstances. No. The Fates do that. But we can always choose who we will be and how we will be within them.

Nicole Y. Walters

The fate of man does not chase him as much as he chases his fate.

Raheel Farooq

Human freedom brings with it the burden of choice and of its consequences. As humankind is akin to claim for its own special privilege a certain unique destiny not afforded with equal measure to other organisms, so must it further—if paradoxically so—entertain the assumption that, in spite of this glorious determinism, there persists nonetheless a thread of free will—or, at the very least, some vague delusion thereof—woven seamlessly into the tapestry of collective experience. Of course, this conception that destiny is to be forged by one’s own hands more often engenders greater restriction than it does greater extension to the potential of human happiness.

Ashim Shanker

We are built to desire free will and to choose our own destiny. It's not about being right or wrong; it's about the celebration of life, your free will. The human spirit must constantly be fed. It is what makes us survive.

DeiAmor Verus

Somewhere out there, a higherform of sadism won the first round.Well, screw that. I'm not ready to bepwned.

Clyde DeSouza

Some say that to believe in destiny is to dismiss the role of free will. That self-determination cannot prevail in the presence of fate. When the truth is, the only part of destiny we can control is the fate we choose for another.

Emily Thorne

Determinism gives you the freedom to do whatever you like.

Raheel Farooq

Not accomplishing your Life Plan is a tragic act of free will. It is akin to charting an elaborate vacation itinerary before arriving at your holiday destination, with all kinds of plans for outdoor adventures and intentions to go sightseeing and shopping, but then ending up spending the whole trip in your hotel room ordering from room service and watching television. In a similar fashion the unconscious soul spends a lifetime in the semi-conscious state of Divine Disconnection and then returns home mostly ‘empty-handed’.

Anthon St. Maarten

I may not be free, but I’m not about to surrender the illusion of choice.

Johnny Rich

I have always felt like a pawn... My skin color's been a curse, my missionary parents made me sober and intense, my school days brought me up against political crimes against Animals, my love life imploded and my lover died, and if I had any life's work of my own, I haven't found it yet, except in animal husbandry, if you could call it that.

Gregory Maguire

Life is not about fulfilling a destiny. Your life has no destiny but what you make of it. And this is what I want to make of it. Barracus also told me to live the life that only I can live. He told me to have the courage to take up that calling. He was asking me to choose my destiny. Prophecy is not only about destiny, but the balance of free will. Becoming a Confessor is my calling. But it's not pre-ordained. It's a chance, a fork in the road of my life. I have to have the courage to take it on of my free will. In that way, the balance of prophecy and free will is the magic of the future.

Terry Goodkind

Intuition goes before you, showing you the way. Emotion follows behind, to let you know when you go astray. Listen to your inner voice. It is the calling of your spiritual GPS system seeking to keep you on track towards your true destiny.

Anthon St. Maarten

I think that both our lives and the potential directions our lives may go are predestined. By using our free will in making our life choices, we do nothing else but picking up one of many already predestined options. To us, it seems like we were making the decision, while in reality, we just selected one of many possibilities that were already a part of our destiny.

Stevan V. Nikolic

It's laughable, looking back, to see the processes I went through, pretending to make a reasoned decision. No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse, the initial desire which is innate and incontrovertible. All the time, I knew where I was going, the elements of my fulfillment or ruin were always present; I only had to work my way into that seam of desire and find the hidden vein of dross or gold. It's not a question of predestination, it's just that free will and destiny are illusions, false opposites, consolations. In the end, they are one and the same: a single process. You choose what you choose and it could not have been otherwise: the choice is destiny. It was there all along, but any alternative you might have considered is an absurd diversion, because it is in your nature to make one choice rather than another. That is identity. To speak of freedom or destiny is absurd because it suggests there is something outside yourself, directing your life, where really it is of the essence: identity, the craftwork of the soul.

John Burnside

Our ability to choose is sacred. It’s what makes humans special.

Mark Andrew Poe

Future is predestined and unchangeable.

Vivake Pathak

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Free Will Quotes - Page 5

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