Quotes About Human Free Will

#1. Accountability is the side effect of human free will.

Kevin A. McKoy

#2. If that's true, then what's the value of human free will?"
"That's a great question," Haida said, and smiled quietly. The kind of smile a cat gives as it stretches out, napping in the sun. "I wish I had an answer for you, but I don't. Not yet.

Haruki Murakami

#3. Public awareness is the equinox of tyranny's rise; once one man learns of another's captivity, he will act to free him. It is the best and most certain part of man's nature.

John Kramer

#4. If you are low on self confidence and your life sucks, become a vegetarian. You will nag on other human beings and hate them so much for abusing animals that you would have no free time to remember how miserable your own life is!

Hamidreza Bagheri

#5. 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.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#6. No society can be simultaneously fair, free, and equal. If it is fair, people who work harder can accumulate more. If it is free, people will give their wealth to their children. But then it cannot be equal, for some people will inherit wealth they did not earn.

Steven Pinker

#7. This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?

Max Planck

#8. And binding nature fast in fate, Left free the human will.

Alexander Pope

#9. Ego is based on judgment. Stop judging and you will be free from the ego: in the Oneness there is no judgment, only Unconditional Love.

Human Angels

#10. When our thoughts, at times, wander into darkness ... remember we are human and have been imbued with free will to choose the light.

Christopher Earle

#11. The most all penetrating spirit before which will open the possibility of tilting not tables, but planets, is the spirit of free human inquiry. Believe only in that.

Dmitri Mendeleev

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

Human Angels

#13. Morality, and the ideal of freedom which is the political expression of morality, are not the property of a given party or group, but a value that is fundamentally and universally human ... No people will be truly free till all are free.

Benedetto Croce

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

Idries Shah

#15. This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson

#16. If there was no free will in men, then there is no sins. When sins happened, it was 'free will' that made them doable. This is true, unless God has predestined human to do and to have sins.

Toba Beta

#17. Free will isn't always about choice; often weakness plays the game

Jeyn Roberts

#18. Regardless of whether people have free will, human flourishing requires that they live in an environment in which they are treated as if they did.

Charles Murray

#19. If we accept that we have at least an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go wrong. Like a human parent, God will help us when we ask for help, but in a way that will make us more mature, more real, not in a way that will diminish us.

Madeleine L'Engle

#20. Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

Alice Walker

#21. But my foreknowledge must not encroach upon their free will. "In order not to impair human liberty, I will be ignorant of what I know, I will thicken upon my eyes the veils I have pierced, and in my blind clearsightedness I will let myself be surprised by what I have foreseen.

Anatole France

#22. Once you forgive yourself, the self-rejection in your mind is over. Self-acceptance begins, and the self-love will grow so strong that you will finally accept yourself just the way you are. That's the beginning of the free human. Forgiveness is the key.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

#23. Every human act had a power behind it, every power had an authority, and every authority had a purpose-dirty bombs constituted by free will and amended by angelic and demonic influence unto the driving of humanity-it was very much active directing. ~RUIN Katara Aggelos

Lucian Bane

#24. We are built to desire free will and to choose our own destiny. It's not about being right or wrong; it's about the celebration of life, your free will. The human spirit must constantly be fed. It is what makes us survive.

DeiAmor Verus

#25. 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.

Amie Kaufman

#26. Human character is never found "to enter into its glory," except through the ordeal of affliction. Its force cannot come forth without the offer of resistance, nor can the grandeur of its free will declare itself, except in the battle of fierce temptation.

James Martineau

#27. Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.

Charlotte Bronte

#28. I really wanted to do something positive on the Internet. I wanted to try to get young people talking about, thinking about, life's big questions-make it cool and OK to wonder about the heart, the soul and free will and God and death and big topics like that, big human topics.

Rainn Wilson

#29. Wherever there is a jackboot stomping on a human face there will be a well-heeled Western liberal to explain that the face does, after all, enjoy free health care and 100 percent literacy.

John Derbyshire

#30. The course of human history consists of a series of encounters between individual human beings and God in which each man and woman or child, in turn, is challenged by God to make his free choice between doing God's will and refusing to do it.

Arnold J. Toynbee

#31. In any land, in any country under modern free competition, to lay any class of weak and despised people, be they white, black, or blue, at the political mercy of their stronger, richer, and more resourceful fellows, is a temptation which human nature seldom has withstood and seldom will withstand.

W.E.B. Du Bois

#32. We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.

John Adams

#33. There are a lot of myths which make the human race cruel and barbarous and unkind. Good and Evil, Sin and Crime, Free Will and the like delusions made to excuse God for damning men and to excuse men for crucifying each other.

Clarence Darrow

#34. Our revenge is to live. We may be hunted like animals but we will not become animals. We have all chosen this - to live free, like human beings, for as long as we can. Each day of freedom is a victory. And if we die trying to live, at least we die like human beings.

Tuvia Bielski

#35. The limited mind owned by human..
requires billions of brains of many generations,
before capable enough to understand the truth,
the kind of truth which will set us free.

Toba Beta

#36. The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.

Clarice Lispector

#37. The only way God could impose peace on the world would be to robotize our wills and rob every human being of the power of choice. He has not chosen to do that. He has given every person a free will.

John Haggai

#38. Torrance emphasized that "the gospel of unconditional grace is very difficult for us, for it is so costly. It takes away from under our feet the very ground on which we want to stand, and the free will which we as human beings cherish so dearly becomes exposed as a subtle form of self-will".

Paul D. Molnar

#39. One should cultivate human values for healthy living. this calls for harmony in thought, word and deed. When you cultivate this harmony you will be free from desires and fears.

Sathya Sai Baba

#40. Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.

Thomas Carlyle

#41. If ever this free people, if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this incessant human wriggle and struggle for office, which is but a way to live without work.

Abraham Lincoln

#42. 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.

Matt Ridley

#43. Most of us assume that human beings have free will. However, ... [we] are very much conditioned by our species, culture, family, and by the past in general ... It is rare for a human being to have free will ... (140)

Ravi Ravindra

#44. The U.S. Supreme Court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our system of law, distinct from "a deterministic view of human conduct that is inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system" (United States v. Grayson, 1978).

Sam Harris

#45. This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.

Neal Stephenson

#46. She refuses to take the easy way out by accepting the get-out-of-jail-free card that I offered her. She refuses to be allowed mistakes and though I know she will still make them because she is human, she will learn faster from them than someone who chooses to accept the excuses.

J.A. Redmerski

#47. Capitalist production ... was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this.

Friedrich Engels

#48. I am a free human being with an independent will.
Jane Eyre

Charlotte Bronte

#49. Human beings always have and always will seek havens where we are free to be productive and to keep the property we create.

John Pugsley

#50. 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.

Libba Bray

#51. If the Internet can be described as a giant human consciousness, then viral marketing is the illusion of free will.

George Pendle

#52. The first dogma which I came to disbelieve was that of free will. It seemed to me that all notions of matter were determined by the laws of dynamics and could not therefore be influenced by human wills.

Bertrand Russell

#53. It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions. One man's religion neither harms nor helps another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion, to which free will and not force should lead us.

Tertullian

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

Abraham Lincoln

#55. Human mortality linked to the human ability consciously to choose how to act by exhibiting free will, humility, hard work, kindness, and compassion provide exemplary opportunities to learn and develop self-discipline.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#56. Human agency, the ability to affect the surrounding world, may be a result not so simply of conscious choice - but instead a result of training unconscious habits beforehand.

Quelle Wikipedia

#57. Until we become the architects of a society that is truly free and ecological, it will always seem that when the human brain is not adaptive, it is more often destructive than creative.

Murray Bookchin

#58. The Human tendency, largely driven by ego, is to believe we can do it all ... It maybe humbling to admit there are only a few things you do really well ... you will free yourself to focus on those things which will lead to greater personal success and significance.

Bob Buford

#59. We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed.

Abraham Lincoln

#60. The dream of a planned, fair, moral, ethical, cash-free society remains strong, particularly among socialists and liberals. It clearly represents a fundamental human instinct. But feudalism just did not work very well, if only because powerful people will not always obey moral imperatives.

Terence Kealey

#61. Robots will someday, or maybe, wake up. They may be really smart. They may be as creative, smart and capable as human beings, and fully conscious, and self discerning with free will.

David Hanson

#62. Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it.

Neil Gaiman

#63. Years ago, a group of good, wise, brave, God-fearing men stood up to claim and defend the human right for independence. Those men are now dead. Their work is not. If good, wise, brave, God-fearing men fail to stand up in their stead, that independence will cease to exist.

Richelle E. Goodrich

#64. You are a human being with a free will. Which puts you above the animal level. But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellowman - you are as an animal - "an

Truman Capote

#65. If our free society is to endure, and I know it will, those who govern must recognize that the Framers of the Constitution limited their power in order to preserve human dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.

William J. Brennan

#66. When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.

Ai Weiwei

#67. The Prince to a slightly more upbeat view of human action. In order "not to rule out our free will," he arrives at a formula by which Fortune is "the arbiter of half the things we do, leaving the other half or so to be controlled by ourselves.

Ross King

#68. I thought that you had stood up for the free will & rights of humans in this town."
"Depends on the human," Claire said. "As far as I know, Hitler had a heartbeat, and I wouldn't vote him to be in charge.

Rachel Caine

#69. The fairy tale emanates from specific struggles to humanize bestial and barbaric forces, which have terrorized our minds and communities in concrete ways, threatening to destroy free will and human compassion. The fairy tale sets out to conquer this concrete terror through metaphors.

Jack D. Zipes

#70. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.

Charlotte Bronte

#71. Everything seemed to have less to do with power, and more to do with right and wrong. And it was also apparent that laws were being manipulated using the inconsistency of free will and the shitty make-up of human nature. ~RUIN Katara Aggelos

Lucian Bane

#72. I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.

Diana Wynne Jones

#73. We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society.

Margaret Thatcher

#74. Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world's expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being.

Pope John Paul II

#75. Limits are always extended, never broken.

Raheel Farooq

#76. Faith itself is an act of human willing enabled and disciplined by grace.

Thomas C. Oden

#77. 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.

Friedrich Nietzsche

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

J.R. Rim

#79. An unexamined faith is not worth having, for fundamentalism and uncritical certitude entail the rejection of one of the great human gifts: that of free will, of the liberty to make up our own minds based on evidence and tradition and reason.

Jon Meacham

#80. As the Maestro is never loath to tell us, a human who suffers from too much ambition succeeds only in exemplifying the Creator's own lack of anticipation. The D.K., wishing His Vision to be innovative, had created the human will as an instinct all but free of Him. Once again, God had miscalculated.

Norman Mailer

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

Henry Lindell

#82. All human suffering springs from unbridled desire. Unless one extricates oneself from the clutch of greed, one will not free himself from the fetters of sorrow.

Velupillai Prabhakaran

#83. Free will, that bitch of a thing. Given the freedom to choose, we human beings will always make the wrong choice, every damn time.

Gemma Files

#84. Where are there are two desires in a man's heart he has no choice between the two but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as free will in the composition of any human being that ever lived.

Mark Twain

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

Oscar Wilde

#86. Angels play a very active role in the purposes of God and the affairs of men, but do not control human events or violate the free will of human beings.

Gary Kinnaman

#87. He vainly said that human will is free,

Voltaire

#88. When the battle is over, the winners find it very hard not to pursue their violence. If you are strong enough to hold violence, you are strong enough to hold true to your pact. Then you have more moral fiber than most adults. Free will is one of the pillars of being human.

Alan McCluskey

#89. Take advantage of this human boat;
Free yourself from sorrow's mighty stream!
This vessel will be later hard to find.
The time that you have now, you fool, is not for sleep!

Shantideva

#90. If we make ourselves worthy of America's ideals, if we do not forget that our nation was founded on the premise that all men are creatures of God's making, the world will come to know that it is free men who carry forward the true promise of human progress and dignity.

Dwight D. Eisenhower