Volition Quotes

I knew that she couldn’t hear me if she was there. But the sound was enough to grab me, to hold me to hope, and with desperation that I’d never known before I knew that I must find my way back to her.

Shawn Kirsten Maravel

«I am tired,» he said. «I did a lot today. That is, I did something. The only thing I have ever done. I pressed a button. It took the entire will power, the accumulated strength of my entire existence, to press one damned OFF button.»«You have lived well,» the Alien said.

Ursula K Le Guin

I have a choice. That’s why I’m still here.

In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not attain what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it.

Friedrich Engels

So, how is it that you don’t have a girlfriend?” I asked boldly.Joel shrugged.“Have you ever had a girlfriend?” There was no way that he’d never had a girlfriend.He shrugged again.“You’re not serious.”“You’re surprised?”“I’m sorry, do you own a mirror?”Joel laughed in that I’ll-never-understand-women kind of way. “I’ve never wanted one,” he admitted, though it seemed that there was more to it.“What? A mirror? Or a girlfriend?”He laughed again, even harder this time. “A girlfriend.”“Are you gay?” He smiled. “No, I’m not gay.”“Oh.” I blushed. Why was I being so nosy all of a sudden?

Shawn Kirsten Maravel