Best 473 quotes in «free will quotes» category

The greatest gift God gave us is also our greatest curse, which is the free will. We are made in God's image, the Bible says, which means we have the ability to love him or not love him, to reject him or not reject him.

The free will is a pagan goddess that the Church has worshipped for far too long.

The greatest judgment which God himself can, in the present life, inflict upon a man is to leave him in the hand of his own boasted 'free'-will.

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.

The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.

The loss of free will I find unacceptable - what most of us refer to as rights.

The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.

The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.

The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.

There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love - every man works his oar voluntarily!

There is no such thing as unlimited trust. At some point, all beings with free will can, and will, betray you when you're no longer pursuing the same goals.

There’s glory and honour in being chosen. But not much room for free will

There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.

The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life.

This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It's almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

We are individuals. There's free will. There's timing. We can make the same things in totally different ways.

Which brings me to my conclusion upon Free Will and Predestination, namely - let the reader mark it - that they are identical.

We suffer from the evils which we, by our own free will, inflict on ourselves and ascribe them to God, who is far from being connected with them!

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.

... we disallow papistical doctrines of free will, of works of supererogation, of merits, of the necessity of auricular confession, and satisfaction to God-wards.

We have already shown that there is no such thing as free will. That's a will-o'-the-wisp. You never make choices without reasons, not as a responsible or a rational person

We have nothing to do, but to choose what is right, to be steady in the pursuit of it, and leave the issue to Providence.

Well, one thing for sure, I won't be remembered for 'Free Willy.' Or maybe I will.

When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

With free will, we can modify, to a certain extent the chain of karma that has been set in motion by the karma of the previous moment. That is what free will really is, the ability to alter the sequence of karmic fate.

You know what's wrong with humanity?... The greatest gift we were given is our free will, and we keep misusing it.

You are the Creator of your reality... you were granted this ability. You have free will... you are an unlimited aspect, a portion of God... of the Creator... of All That Is.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Any good world would allow for us to have free will, yes?" he continued. "Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices - and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world.

...any object functioning within the physical laws of any particular universe does not have free will ... In terms of human beings, all behavior and cognition cannot appear out of thin air. Behavior and cognition must be the result of prior causes. This is because our brains obey the same laws of a cause and effect physical universe just like any other physical object. All events that occur in the universe are caused by antecedent events. Quantum indeterminacy, which maintains that the state of a system does not determine a unique collection of values for all its measurable properties, is not a valid argument for free will and has been used incorrectly to justify beliefs of independent decision-making. Logically speaking, notions of randomness and indeterminism are actually additional arguments against free will. All events that occur at random in the universe are, by definition, not caused by antecedent events. Or to say it a different way, any random event cannot also be a willed event. By the process of elimination, events that are “willed freely” are events that are neither determined nor random. In other words, in all likelihood events that are “willed freely” are events that simply do not exist.

Anything that comes your way by force was not meant for you. Everything that locates you on it's own was yours and will be yours forever.

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?

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.

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.