Best 473 quotes in «free will quotes» category

Don’t you know that everything you do in life has consequences?

Duty eats free will for breakfast.

Each of us, A CEll Of Awareness... imperfect, and incomplete. Genetic blends, with uncertain ends.

Educated people, of course, know that perception, cognition, language, and emotion are rooted in the brain. But it is still tempting to think of the brain as it was shown in old educational cartoons, as a control panel with gauges and levers operated by a user — the self, the soul, the ghost, the person, the “me.” But cognitive neuroscience is showing that the self, too, is just another network of brain systems. [C]ognitive neuroscientists have not only exorcised the ghost but have shown that the brain does not even have a part that does exactly what the ghost is supposed to do: review all the facts and make a decision for the rest of the brain to carry out. Each of us feels that there is a single “I” in control. But that is an illusion that the brain works hard to produce, like the impression that our visual fields are rich in detail from edge to edge. The brain does have supervisory systems in the prefrontal lobes and anterior cingulate cortex, which can push the buttons of behavior and override habits and urges. But those systems are gadgets with specific quirks and limitations; they are not implementations of the rational free agent traditionally identified with the soul or the self.

Every decision that we make based on “free will” is ours to learn from, not for God to punish us

En travaux pratiques de physique, n'importe quel collégien peut faire des expériences pour vérifier l'exactitude d'une hypothèse scientifique. Mais l'homme, parce qu'il n'a qu'une seule vie, n'a aucune possibilité de vérifier l'hypothèse par l'expérience de sorte qu'il ne saura jamais s'il a eu tort ou raison d'obéir à son sentiment. (partie I, ch. 16)

Even if there can be the first cause of the Universe -- God, it wouldn’t necessarily support any evidence that God can convey some information about his will to some chosen persons, that there is some holy scriptures, containing just God’s message to humanity sent in that way. Any information, which you can get from the alleged ‘holy scripture’, is a product of the human mind, written by humans and changed by humans in various periods.There is no invariant version of any ‘holy scripture’, even if the concepts and propositions of it formally remain the same, their meaning is changing constantly, as a result of different interpretations, from one civilization to another, from one period to another. That interpretation is more essential and decisive than what is formally written there. Not ‘holy scripture’ itself, but its interpretation manipulates brains in such a way that a person builds his religious vision on the basis of the interpretation of ‘holy scripture’ made by somebody else. Without that interpretation, a person can hardly perceive anything in ‘holy scripture’ in terms of religion. But the main problem is that there cannot be only one interpretation of ‘holy scripture’, and there cannot be harmony among various religious visions, even within one religion. One interpretation can make you be humanist, while another -- aggressive, depending on who and how interpreted what is written there. The naked truth is that when someone interprets something, he does it according to his mental apparatus, that is why any ‘holy scripture’ can only express the state of this mental apparatus with its cognitive and emotional bias, in some cases even its serious defect and disorder, and not the will of God itself.

Every day is a blank canvas to use our free will to create something beautiful for our Creator.

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")

Every single decision of your life is predicated on the healthy functioning of the prefrontal cortex. Even a slight malfunction in a tiny chunk of neuron anywhere in the PFC would lead to the mental deficit in your logical decision-making.

Faith is free will.

Facebook would never put it this way, but algorithms are meant to erode free will, to relieve humans of the burden of choosing, to nudge them in the right direction. Algorithms fuel a sense of omnipotence, the condescending belief that our behavior can be altered, without our even being aware of the hand guiding us, in a superior direction. That's always been a danger of the engineering mindset, as it moves beyond its roots in building inanimate stuff and beings to design a more perfect social world. We are the screws and rivets in their grand design

Fate seems to scourge some people with her furies, while it ravishes others with her graces with none having done absolutely nothing to suffer the furies or merit the graces.

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.

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

Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time. “Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.

Freedom is the brevity to resist detrimental act.

Freedom is the choice to be free than to be a slave.

Freedom of will is born from the neurons. And that freedom allows you to sometimes make even the worst decisions ever in your life. And by making the worst decision, you simply learn what would be the better decision in future.

Freedom that is not fought for, that is not gained by personal sacrifice is freedom that will never last, because in the heart of the one set free, it will have little value. A treasure that costs nothing is a treasure that is easily neglected and lost.

Free-will followers should learn more about "somebody's bitch". Predestination followers should learn more about "sexual fantasy.

Free will comes at a price. A price most of us do not know how to pay.

Free will is the cutting edge of Creation, don’t you see? The word spontaneity derives from the Latin sponte, meaning ‘of one’s free will.’ Spontaneity is the impulse, the purest expression of freedom, and the impulse wants to do whatever it wants to do. But you are afraid of what others think, others who are just as afraid of what you think, and so you pussyfoot along the perimeter of the free-will zone, wilting like a wallflower.

Free will," she agreed, "our greatest gift, the thing that makes life worth living, in spite of all the anguish it brings.

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

Future is predestined and unchangeable.

Finally, I had held up examples of Goldhagen's inflammatory language and suggested that he had missed the essence of what Primo Levi once called the 'grey zone' of human affairs, described by the historian Christopher Browning as that foggy universe of mixed motives, conflicting emotions, personal priorities, reluctant choices, opportunism and accomodation, all wedded, when convenient, to self-deception and denial. I thought that by marshalling his research into an overly narrow narrative, painted without nuance in black and white, the author had missed the human complexity and the ordinariness of racism.

Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.

Free will and choice implies that you are able to even re-write your record of memories.

Free will? Either you follow the word of God, or you'll be punished with eternal hellfire. That's the same kind of "choice" an abuse boyfriend gives you: 'Either you do exactly what I say, or I'll beat the shit out of you.

Freedom is not having the right to speak, Freedom is having the right to decide if yeu want to speak or not

Free-will doesn't include shit-happens, unless that's the goal of one's intention.

Free Will : "I made you think so." Predestination: "I knew you had to.

Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making.

Given his emphasis on human freedom it is no wonder why some champion Kierkegaard as the father of existentialism, a philosophy that prices choice as the central feature of human existence and emphasizes the importance of defining oneself. For Kierkegaard, however, freedom and choice are not radical, as they are for some existentialists, and this can be seen in two ways. First, if humans are created beings, then freedom itself is a condition of being unfree with regard to one's very existence. Second, we often use our freedom in ways that lead, oddly enough, to a loss of that very freedom.

Getting unstuck is a matter of choice. If you want flourish in life make a choice today to move into that reality. You can do it.

Given the scientific investigation, the only causal machine in human existence, in the ultimate end, is the brain, which seems to be mainly out of control: The sensation, perception and imagination of the external world are automatically determined by the interpretation of input signals receiving through sense organs; making a choice and decision are automatically realized on the base of this interpretation, which, In later period, regulate the behavior patterns in a social environment. The only causal and interpretation machine, as described above, the brain is thought to be automatically shaped by various external factors, such as genetic programming that determines the design of a brain – various proportions among the various circuits in such a way that if your brain devotes more space for aggression and anxiety center, for example, then it is very high probability that you are a ‘wild beast’ inside. As you cannot pick out your brain when you are born, because at least the genetic inheritance is out of your control, it is nearly impossible for you to avoid the very fact that your internal world is so. Maybe, your inner wildness doesn’t reveal itself in the everyday world, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have conscious control over it. Because of being hidden mainly in your unconsciousness, even your conscious mind can be unaware of the very fact of its existence. From scientific perspective, it can be stated, in this case, that the censor system of your brain is quite active to make sufficiently well-considered selection among desires that unintentionally emerge in aggression and anxiety circuits, and to hide most of them, which involve an extreme violence and destruction, in hidden consciousness in order to protect the ‘perfect’ image of your personality in social system, or simply to avoid to be punished on the grounds of these implausible, unfavorable desires in that system. If this is so, where is your freedom – free choice? Doesn’t it seem that the naked truth is that your brain, instead of you, makes a choice, decides, controls, regulates of almost everything in your life, leaving for you a room for being just a ‘perfect’ bio-social robot that lives in his or her illusion of free will?

God decided to create a world where free will was more important than no one ever getting hurt. There must be something stunningly beautiful and remarkable about free will that only God can truly grasp, because God hates, literally abhors, evil, yet He created a world where evil could happen if people chose it.

Have you ever thought what it means to have free will in terms of religion? Imagine that God created you with a gay brain, and then expects you to be a heterosexual, but not homosexual, because you have free will to choose the 'right way'.

God's greatest gift to man In all the bounty He was moved to make Throughout creation-the one gift the most Close to his goodness and the one He calls Most precious-is free will.

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!

Have you ever thought what it means to have free will in terms of religion? Imagine that God created you with a gay brain, and then expects you to be heterosexual but not homosexual, because you have free will to choose the right way.

Having placed himself on the level of the world for humans to choose between, God nevertheless stipulates that a choice must be made, human freedom must be exercised. There is no neutral position, no way to avoid the choice of God or the world. In other words, a failure to choose God is no different from choosing against God. 'If God has lowered himself to being that which can be chosen, then a person indeed must choose - God is not mocked'. For Kierkegaard this caveat buttresses two important theological convictions. God can be loved freely through a choice. And yet, however one chooses - even if one thinks one can abstain - God's power is honored because a choice is nevertheless made.

Good or evil is not who we are, it’s who we choose to be.

Hard to grasp democracy without free will.

Harry, life isn't simple. There is such a thing as black and white. Right and wrong. But when you're in the thick of things, sometimes it's hard for us to tell. You didn't do what you did for your own benefit. You did it so that you could protect others. That doesn't make it right - but it doesn't make you a monster, either. You still have free will. You still get to choose what you will do and what you will be and what you will become.

Having learnt from experiment and argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this, and always expects the law he has learnt to be fulfilled. But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws, he does not and cannot believe it. However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the same conditions and with the same character he will do the same thing as before, yet when, under the same conditions and with the same character, he approaches for the thousandth time the action that always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot imagine life. He feels that, however impossible it may be, it is so, for without this conceptions of freedom not only would he be unable to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single moment. He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness, health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of freedom. A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of life. If the conception of freedom appears to reason a senseless contradiction, like the possibility of performing two actions at one and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.

Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other. With the greater consciousness of the issues involved comes a lesser assurance that an alternative is possible.

Help others while respecting the Sacred Law of Free Will. By recognizing and honoring God in others, you recognize and honor God within yourself.

Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).