quotations about free will
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.
STEPHEN HAWKING
attributed, Words from the Wise
Each man is the bard of his own existence.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Cities of the Plain
No free will but in my grave.
AGATHOCLES
"Is There a Place?"
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
Eat, Pray, Love
The belief in free will is like our hand believing it is ultimately responsible for what it does.
NICK VALE
The Newer Testament
What human beings -- you and I think of as our free will does not really exist. It is only an epiphenomenon or secondary phenomenon, secondary to the causal power of matter. And any causal power that we seem to be able to exert on matter is just an illusion. This is the current paradigm. Now, the opposite view is that everything starts with consciousness. That is, consciousness is the ground of all being. In this view, consciousness imposes "downward causation." In other words, our free will is real. When we act in the world we really are acting with causal power. This view does not deny that matter also has causal potency -- it does not deny that there is causal power from elementary particles upward, so there is upward causation -- but in addition it insists that there is also downward causation.
AMIT GOSWAMI
"Scientific Proof of the Existence of God: An Interview with Amit Goswami", What Is Enlightenment?, spring/summer 1997
There is no illusion of free will. Thoughts and intentions simply arise. What else could they do? Now, some of you might think this sounds depressing, but it's actually incredibly freeing to see life this way. It does take something away from life: what it takes away from life is an egocentric view of life. We're not truly separate: we are linked to one another, we are linked to the world, we are linked to our past, and to history. And what we do actually matters because of that linkage, because of the permeability, because of the fact that we can't be the true locus of responsibility.
SAM HARRIS
discussion on free will at Sydney Opera House Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2012
Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU
attributed, The Shotoku Teahouse
Not all of life's roads are set fast, for a man may do this or a man may do that and not even the gods know the mind of a man.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Consider, for example, the problem of the freedom of the will. You maintain that you are free to take either the right- or the left-hand fork in the road. I defy you to set up a single objective criterion by which you can prove after you have made the turn that you might have made the other. The problem has no meaning in the sphere of objective activity; it only relates to my personal subjective feelings while making the decision.
PERCY WILLIAMS BRIDGMAN
The Nature of Physical Theory
The same way a compact disk isn't responsible for what's recorded on it, that's how we are. You're about as free to act as a programmed computer. You're about as one-of-a-kind as a dollar bill.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Invisible Monsters
Possess yourself
Or somebody else will
THE FIXX
"I Will", Phantoms
My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Thought and Character of William James
For you will certainly carry out God's purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.
C.S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
The ultimate objective test of free will would seem to be: Can one predict the behavior of the organism? If one can, then it clearly doesn't have free will but is predetermined.
STEPHEN HAWKING
Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays
You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.
SAM HARRIS
Free Will
We must believe in free will -- we have no choice.
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
City Journal, Summer 1997
According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it. According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it.
G.K. CHESTERTON
Orthodoxy
Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
The people who walk angelically according to their free will and practice discipline in the life of the angels remove themselves completely from the desires of the flesh, beloved brothers; they die daily in the life that belongs to earth, but they live in the life of the angels, just as they share in the life of the Lord.
ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA
Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism