Best 473 quotes in «free will quotes» category

You're saying the gods don't have free will." "The power to make mistakes," Penny said. "Only we have that. Mortals

A conscious being without free will is simply a metaphysical absurdity.

A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.

A god that created me free and autonomous, yet, tells me how and what I should think. - On Religion and Free Will

All happiness happens in the Now. Therefore, how we interpret every passing moment is one of the most crucial choices we make.

An apparent misfortune of man is that neither good nor evil is an agency itself; both are equally passive choices. Man himself is the ultimate agency. He has the power to realize and activate the dead options. Only then, that is, by the action of Will, good results in good and evil in evil.

A cult is a group of people who share an obsessive devotion to a person or idea. The cults described in this book use violent tactics to recruit, indoctrinate, and keep members. Ritual abuse is defined as the emotionally, physically, and sexually abusive acts performed by violent cults. Most violent cults do not openly express their beliefs and practices, and they tend to live separately in noncommunal environments to avoid detection. Some victims of ritual abuse are children abused outside the home by nonfamily members, in public settings such as day care. Other victims are children and teenagers who are forced by their parents to witness and participate in violent rituals. Adult ritual abuse victims often include these grown children who were forced from childhood to be a member of the group. Other adult and teenage victims are people who unknowingly joined social groups or organizations that slowly manipulated and blackmailed them into becoming permanent members of the group. All cases of ritual abuse, no matter what the age of the victim, involve intense physical and emotional trauma. Violent cults may sacrifice humans and animals as part of religious rituals. They use torture to silence victims and other unwilling participants. Ritual abuse victims say they are degraded and humiliated and are often forced to torture, kill, and sexually violate other helpless victims. The purpose of the ritual abuse is usually indoctrination. The cults intend to destroy these victims' free will by undermining their sense of safety in the world and by forcing them to hurt others. In the last ten years, a number of people have been convicted on sexual abuse charges in cases where the abused children had reported elements of ritual child abuse. These children described being raped by groups of adults who wore costumes or masks and said they were forced to witness religious-type rituals in which animals and humans were tortured or killed. In one case, the defense introduced in court photographs of the children being abused by the defendants[.1] In another case, the police found tunnels etched with crosses and pentacles along with stone altars and candles in a cemetery where abuse had been reported. The defendants in this case pleaded guilty to charges of incest, cruelty, and indecent assault.[2] Ritual abuse allegations have been made in England, the United States, and Canada.[3] Many myths abound concerning the parents and children who report ritual abuse. Some people suggest that the tales of ritual abuse are "mass hysteria." They say the parents of these children who report ritual abuse are often overly zealous Christians on a "witch-hunt" to persecute satanists. These skeptics say the parents are fearful of satanism, and they use their knowledge of the Black Mass (a historically well-known, sexualized ritual in which animals and humans are sacrificed) to brainwash their children into saying they were abused by satanists.[4] In 1992 I conducted a study to separate fact from fiction in regard to the disclosures of children who report ritual abuse.[5] The study was conducted through Believe the Children, a national organization that provides support and educational sources for ritual abuse survivors and their families.

A human being does at all times only what he wills, and yet does it necessarily. But that rests on the fact that he is what he wills: for out of what he is everything that he does at any time follows necessarily.

Although her disobedience is tragic, Eve’s innocence is not all bad. Certainly, that innocfence leads her to make a poor choice - the very worst - but the fact that she makes a choice at all, the fact that she engages the Devil in a debate which could go either way, the fact that she acts without God breathing down her neck - all speak for her free will or, what amounts to the same thing, her margin for error. It is from this margin for error that freedom springs, because you can’t be free to right unless you can be free to be wrong.

A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.

And so it is, that both the Devil and the angelic Spirit present us with objects of desire to awaken our power of choice. There is an invisible strength within us; when it recognizes two opposing objects of desire, it grows stronger.

And so from then onwards, Daniel understood that the point of this grueling sundial project was not merely to plot the curve but to understand why each curve was shaped as it was. To put it another way, Isaac wanted to be able to walk up to a blank wall on a cloudy day, stab a gnomom into it, and draw all of the curves simply by knowing where shadow would pass. This was the same thing as knowing where the sun would be in the sky and that was the same as knowing where the Earth was in its circuit around the sun, and in its daily rotation. Though as months went on, Daniel understood that Isaac wanted to be able to do the same thing even if the blank wall happened to be situated on, say, the moon that Christiaan Huygens had lately discovered revolving around Saturn. Exactly how this might be accomplished was a question with ramifications that extended into such fields as would Isaac, and Daniel for that matter, be thrown out of Trinity College? Were the Earth and all the works of man nearing the end of a long, relentless decay that had begun with the expulsion from Eden, and that would very soon culminate in the apocalypse? Or might things actually be getting better, with the promise of continuing to do so? Did people have souls? Did they have free will?

Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.

A predator is what you are, and nothing you can do will change that. But being a killer is a choice you make. That’s the dilemma of free will. You can’t change your nature, but you can decide how to act on it.

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.

As if each of us might somehow have a blueprint. As if somewhere there's the shape of my life, and I had the chance to choose a few variations, but not far from the pattern.

As Lynn writes: "What angers me is the loss of control. At any moment someone could come to me, be dressed the right way and use the right code, and I no longer have free will. I will do anything that person requests. I hate them for that. Nothing else is as bad as known that I am always out of control; knowing that I am still a laboratory experiment, a puppet whose strings are hidden from ever but my handlers, and I don't yet know how to break free. p216

Becoming sensitive to the background causes of one's thoughts and feelings can—paradoxically—allow for greater creative control over one's life. It is one thing to bicker with your wife because you are in a bad mood; it is another to realize that your mood and behavior have been caused by low blood sugar. This understanding reveals you to be a biochemical puppet, of course, but it also allows you to grab hold of one of your strings: A bit of food may be all that your personality requires. Getting behind our concious thoughts and feelings can allow us to steer a more intelligent course through our lives (while knowing, of course, that we are ultimately being steered).

But free will is what it means to be human, and no one can determine the path you take through this universe. Choice is our greatest right, our greatest gift-and our greatest responsibility.

By weaving their thoughts and feelings into the substance of reality, the Weavers had ensured anyone writing about them would secure an instant bestseller – which wasn’t particularly difficult, considering the Weavers held the strings on the one holding the pen. Those who controlled the Pattern, controlled reality.

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

Coaching is like a magic mirror, reflecting what you are thinking, feeling and saying about everything in life. By working together, you'll understand your own mirror and break all the boundaries to become limitless

Coaching is like a magic mirror, reflecting what you are thinking, feeling and saying about everything in life. By working together, you'll understand your own mirror and change it to become limitless.

Condition A must be in place for action B to take place

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.

Denigrating free will by confusing it with ka was worse than blasphemy; it was tiresome and stupid.

Determinism gives you the freedom to do whatever you like.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.

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.

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

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.

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

Faith is free will.

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.

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 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 is the content. Inevitability is the form.

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