Best 473 quotes in «free will quotes» category

She talked about God giving man free will. Because of that, there is evil in the world. If God pulled everyone’s strings all the time, we’d be puppets.

Since we have free will, we create our own reality and virtually everything is negotiable.

Societal peer pressure to conform runs strong, but as more of us continue to think and act for ourselves, rather than be under the influence of group-think, we begin to make more effective choices.

Some of the greatest achievements of modern philosophy result from the attempt to reconcile the belief in human freedom with the eternal laws of God’s nature, and among these achievements Spinoza’s is not only the most imaginative and profound, but perhaps the only one that is truly plausible.

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.

Sometimes will is what eventually makes the difference.

Somewhere out there, a higher form of sadism won the first round. Well, screw that. I'm not ready to be pwned.

Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must be constantly won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined and good state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.

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

Spiritual is criterion, where free will exists in plenty.

Stress can alter the expression of genes, which can affect the response to stress and so on. Human behavior is therefore unpredictable in the short term, but broadly predictable in the long term.

Stubbornness" is knowing exactly what you want courageously living by free will; never to be judged or ridiculed.

Sure, the outcome was favourable, but what was the cost? Wasn't changing the way she felt about something not far from taking away her free will altogether?

Take the Holocaust for example: Why did God allow Hitler to kill millions of innocent Jews? Because God didn't want to step on Hitler's toes and interfere with his free will? That's a pretty lame excuse. What about the free will of all those Jews who died? I'm pretty sure that getting gassed to death was obviously not their choice. So, was the Holocaust part of God's great plan? Is that why he allowed it to happen? Is that why God didn't answer the prayers of all those Jews who begged him to make Hitler drop dead? Why didn't God just make Hitler have a heart attack before he could start World War 2? Why didn't he simply prevent Hitler from being born? How could a God who is supposed to be all good all the time allow something like the Holocaust? Or did God not just LET it happen? Maybe God MADE the Holocaust happen, because everything that happens, happens for a good reason? Are our minds simply too tiny, too inferior, to understand God's divine plan? Are we just too stupid to see the greater good that came out of the Holocaust? If that were true, and everything that happens, including the Holocaust, is part of God's perfect plan, then that means that Hitler really wasn't a bad man at all. He was actually doing God's work. And if Hitler did exactly what he was supposed to do in God's great plan, then Hitler obviously didn't have free will, but was just God's puppet. So that means Hitler was a good guy. A man of God. Sorry, but there is no religion in the world that could sell me on believing THAT bullshit.

The bible doesn't say Jesus had a power to command, only to recommend, which leaves each one of us with an individual freedom of choice. Maybe it's just that there are too many of us making too many bad choices for the good of the whole." He took a bite out of his apple. "Too many people and none of us wanting or able to hear the harmony.

The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place. Or, at least not yet again. As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility.

The division in human religion has always been between those who see the fall of man as a fall into freedom and those who see it as an act of defiance against the tyranny of an all-powerful father. But Adam and Eve were never in heaven; they were in the mud, and had to leave the only home they had ever known behind. And why? For choosing love and freedom over perpetual infancy and slavery of the will. Their sin was moral responsibility. Their reward is clear: "They have becomes gods--knowing good and evil." And for that, they were condemned to live in a world of discovery and choices.

The doctor loved his wife and child. They were the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him in his life--especially his daughter for whom his love bordered on obsession. For them, he would have gladly given up his life. Indeed, he had often imagined doing so, and the deaths he had endured for them in his mind seemed the sweetest deaths imaginable. At the same time, however, he would often come home from work and, seeing his wife and daughter there, think to himself, These people are, finally, separate human beings, with whom I have no connection. They were something other, something of which he had no true knowledge, something that existed in a place far away from the doctor himself. And whenever he felt this way, the thought would cross his mind that he himself had chosen neither of these people on his own--which did not prevent him from loving them unconditionally, without the slightest reservation. This was, for the doctor, a great paradox, an insoluble contradiction, a gigantic trap that had been set for him in his life.

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

The goal of spirituality is total and permanent freedom from psychological sorrows and sufferings. This is only possible when we will stop taking birth as individuals again and again. What makes us an ‘Individual’? The ignorance. What kind of ignorance? Our idea about our self that ‘I am an individual’.

The greatest of all capabilities of a human being is to become born again.

So if you are writing a story where love is the meaning, where love is the highest and best of all, where love is the point, then you have to allow each person a choice. You have to allow freedom. You cannot force love. God gives us the dignity of freedom, to choose for or against him (and friends, to ignore him is to choose against him). This is the reason for what Lewis called the Problem of Pain. Why would a kind and loving God create a world where evil is possible? Doesn’t he care about our happiness? Isn’t he good? Indeed, he does and he is. He cares so much for our happiness that he endows us with the capacity to love and be loved, which is the greatest happiness of all.

Technically, according to the notion of the will of God, there is no such a thing as a competent surgeon.

The answer to the question raised in the title of this essay - Is salvation a matter of divine determination or human responsibility? - is not divine determination or human responsibility. The only thoroughly biblical answer is yes. Scripturally, it is not an 'either-or' but a 'both-and' proposition. Why is this so hard? For one thing, it is logically unsatisfactory and apparently contradictory. Our insatiable appetite for order and answers makes it difficult to admit...that God's ways are not our ways, and leave it at that. (Isaiah 55:9). We don't mind applying this principle in a general, hypothetical way to God's wisdom or methods. But we balk when interferes with our theological system, our obsession with pigeonholing every Bible fact into a neat, orderly arrangement that leaves no questions unanswered. God transcends our logic. He is supra-logical. His thinking, His design, His way, His theology is infinitely above our intellect, beyond the grasp of our comprehension, out of the reach of our clever rationalizations. God is theo-logical. Man is anthropo-logical.

The art of making True promises within ones ownself is termed as Will (Sankalp)... for beginners (like me) it is a tough learning and for siddhas; they just become that way... effortlessly they sail...

The choice is not in what you do. The choice is in the why.

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.

The Creator puts life into motion, and doesn’t just sit around all day moving each and every piece this way and that on his whims. If life was just one gigantic board game, God isn’t the banker or the leader, or even a collection of all the players. God is just the one who invented the game. You can be pissed all you want when something awful or even evil happens during the game, but you have no right to go and sue Milton Bradley.

The destination is fulfilling when the path is authentically your own; find the courage and forge your own path; your essence is at stake

The first guy asks the second guy, 'Do you believe in free will?' The second guy answers, 'I have no choice.

The future is just a projection of the past.

The idea of original sin--of guilt with no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives--inherently militates against self-esteem. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality. Sin is not original, it is originated--like virtue.

The illusion of free will is so strong in my mind that I can't get away from it, but I believe it is only an illusion. But it is an illusion which is one of the strongest motives of my actions. Before I do anything I feel that I have a choice, and that influences what I do; but afterwards, when the thing is done, I believe it was inevitable from all eternity.' 'What do you deduce from that?' 'Why merely the futility of regret. It's no good crying over spilt milk, because all the forces of the universe were bent on spilling it.

The liberal story instructs me to seek freedom to express and realise myself. But both the ‘self’ and freedom are mythological chimeras borrowed from the fairy tales of ancient times. Liberalism has a particularly confused notion of ‘free will’. Humans obviously have a will, they have desires, and they are sometimes free to fulfil their desires. If by ‘free will’ you mean the freedom to do what you desire – then yes, humans have free will. But if by ‘free will’ you mean the freedom to choose what to desire – then no, humans have no free will.

...the magic was a tool, though a natural, mysterious tool. In its awareness of the magic, his human nature had desired to connect with it, to use it. The whisperings were the voice of his own awakening, not the seductive call of a dark power. Using it was not corruption, but a natural extension of his being. And he could control the manner in which he used it. He would.

The man who can keep order can rule the world, but the man who can bear disorder is truly free.

Then why do we do so many bad things? He sighed. “Because one thing God gave us—and I’m afraid it’s at times a little too much—is free will. Freedom to choose. I believe he gave us everything needed to build a beautiful world, if we choose wisely.

The illusion that humans possess free will is compounded by the inherent randomness of the universe. Chaos disguised as freedom of choice...

The limit of a person's will, at least in one respect, is the limit of that person's ability to believe.

The mother of goodwill is freewill, if untainted by evil.

The neurological condition of echopraxia is to autonomy as blindsight is to consciousness.

The philosopher who denies free will is like an astronomer who denies the stars.

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available.

The ray of light has to know where it will ultimately end up before it can choose the direction to begin moving in" "Fermat's principle sounds weird because it describes light's behavior in goal-oriented terms. It sounds like a commandment to a light beam: "Thou shalt minimize or maximize the time taken to reach thy destination.

There is a big park in the middle of the locality. Surrounded by at least 50 houses. That those residents got to live in such a locale is their karma. Do they ever come to the park? To walk, jog, run, play ? That is free will.

There is a distinct difference between Darkness and Satan. Darkness is silence, the void, Zen; nothingness. Satan was a pig-headed being who fought to get his way. Wake up! Don't let him have his way anymore.

There is no greater moment in life than that when we discover the unique design which has shaped our lives from the moment of birth, save one: The instant we recognize destiny, accept it and then begin to create the rest of our own lives within it using the power of free will. When this threshold has been crossed, nothing can stop our inevitable journey into the highest good for ourselves and all around us. This is healing. This is actualization. This is integration. This is joy. And it is the birthright of every incarnated soul on this planet.

There is not one certain future, that much i know. Each of our lives creates what is to come. The universe is not a clock that has been set to run in one direction. It is a maze, a giant puzzle that changes and grows each time a player takes one path over another. Every time you make a choice, you make the future.

Theologians talk about free will, but I couldn't have told her no if I'd wanted to.