Quotes About Volition

#1. Boys' connections - to other people and to their selves - can enable them to think and act of their own volition and to resist overly restrictive norms and expectation when they are faced with pressures to conform.

Judy Chu

#2. If the laws of physics are not strictly causal the most that can be said is that the behaviour of the conscious brain is one of the possible behaviours of a mechanical brain. Precisely so; and the decision between the possible behaviours is what we call volition.

Arthur Stanley Eddington

#3. An icon didn't do anything of its own volition. A symbol didn't act of its own accord. Both cities projected what they wanted onto me, and wanted me to stay still as they did it.

Sarah Rees Brennan

#4. Love itself is not an act of will, but sometimes I need the force of my volition to break with my habitual responses and pass along the love already here.

Hugh Prather

#5. That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm.

Christopher Moore

#6. The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.

Charles Sanders Peirce

#7. I joined the local athletics club when I was 12, that's what I did. I did it of my own volition.

Sebastian Coe

#8. As far as you are concerned the present is your point of action, focus and power, and from that point of volition you form both your future and past. Realizing this, you will understand that you are not at the mercy of a past over which you have no control.

Seth

#9. Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

Yann Martel

#10. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live

Toni Morrison

#11. The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption.

Criss Jami

#12. If volition is bound to social imperatives, as William James believed, and it's therefore easier to go to war than it is to quit smoking, one could say that Liz Norton was a woman who found it easier to quit smoking than to go to war.

Roberto Bolano

#13. 'I froze. Like an idiot I froze. He was staring right at me. ( ... ) He wore an innocent and mesmerizing smile directed right at me. I did my best to ignore it but having a gorgeously naked man staring at me like I was the only girl in the world was impossible to brush off.

Shawn Kirsten Maravel

#14. Unto each one hath been prescribed a preordained measure, as decreed in God's mighty and guarded Tablets. All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition.

Baha'u'llah

#15. Literature remains an indispensable human activity, in which the reader and the writer are engaged of their own volition. Hence, literature has no duty to the masses or society, and ethical or moral pronouncements added by busybody critics are of no concern to the writer.

Gao Xingjian

#16. In quick succession, Qhuinn reviewed his answers: No, of course not, the knife was acting of its own volition. I was actually trying to stop it ... No, I only meant to give him a shave ... No, I didn't realize that slicing open someone's jugular was going to lead to death.

J.R. Ward

#17. A person with half volition goes backwards and forwards, but makes no progress on even the smoothest of roads.

Thomas Carlyle

#18. The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts -the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria -are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy.

Edward Dahlberg

#19. Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition.

Anthony Horowitz

#20. Liberty is not an Idea belonging to Volition, or preferring; but to the Person having the Power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the Mind shall chuse or direct.

John Locke

#21. Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice," they write, "whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self.

Daniel H. Pink

#22. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.

William James

#23. Innate directs its vital energy through the nervous system to specialize the coordination and sensation and volition through the cumulative and vegetative functions.

Daniel D. Palmer

#24. Jewish status is defined by the divine election of Israel and his descendants. One does not become a Jew by one's own volition.

David Novak

#25. No one wants to suffer. But that is the fate of each. And some suffer more. Not necessarily of their own volition. It's not about to enduring the suffering. It's about how you endure it.

Andrzej Sapkowski

#26. I was investing more and more of myself into an outcome I couldn't predict and would very likely be disappointed by. But for me there was no other option.

Shawn Kirsten Maravel

#27. Any creation of art is conceived and born under influences, amidst the atmosphere of reverie and the most customary volition of the artist. It is there, in any case, that his work arises from.

Emile Galle

#28. The true test of a leader is whether his followers will adhere to his cause from their own volition, enduring the most arduous hardships without being forced to do so, and remaining steadfast in the moments of greatest peril.

Xenophon

#29. I'm using my own person in pieces, but I'm trying to turn my person into a nonperson in the sense of a person without will, without volition. I'm subjecting myself to a scheme.

Vito Acconci

#30. She'd probably rip his nuts off and choke him with them for even suggesting it. But hey, at least then she'd be touching me of her own volition.

Eve Langlais

#31. This was the way he had to go; he had no choice. He had never had any choice. He was only a dreamer.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#32. I believe stories have a will of their own, one that surpasses in volition that of their teller. In realms of Storytelling, stories control their bearers, and eventually, their hearers as well.

Ibraheem Hamdi

#33. To me, songs come of their own volition - and with an open-ended philosophy.

Rufus Wainwright

#34. I have brain damage, remember? I'm not responsible for my actions
or for the actions of my hand, which acted of its own volition and without my knowledge.' Cam to Bailey

Linda Howard

#35. The other thing I like, in fact, several months ago I introduced a bill to end the absurd catch and release policy where our government has been giving tickets, essentially, to people who enter illegally and then letting them go and show up of their own volition.

John Doolittle

#36. Volition ... takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness.

William James

#37. I look up into the sky to see all the drops falling on the ground before they make contact. I realize the drops have more in common with me than I think. We're all just falling until we're not falling, and we don't really have a choice where we land.

Lily Paradis

#38. Things turn up in strange places all the time. For example library books, which possess a disconcerting ability to move from place to place, seemingly of their own volition.

Lauren Willig

#39. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality.

Ayn Rand

#40. You're a stubborn, ill-trained horse." she said
The horse snorted and walked towards the North Road of his own volition.
"Hey!" Karigan pulled back on the reins. "Whoa. Who do you think is in charge here?

Kristen Britain

#41. Because what is man without his volition but a stop on a barrel-organ cylinder?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#42. He wanted this to show the raw power of volition. The man and woman he carved were his refuge against his despair over his captivity. They embodied freedom of spirit. They embodied reason rising up to triumph.

Terry Goodkind

#43. Anyone who has that weird volition to become an actor probably has a weird volition to do lots of other creative things - to write, to play music, to paint, to cook.

Minnie Driver

#44. We see that every external motion, act, gesture, whether voluntary or mechanical, organic or mental, is produced and preceded by internal feeling or emotion, will or volition, and thought or mind.

Helena Blavatsky

#45. The idea of Original Sin - of guilt where there is no possibility of innocence, no freedom of choice, no alternatives available - is anti-self-esteem by its very nature. The very notion of guilt without volition or responsibility is an assault on reason as well as on morality.

Nathaniel Branden

#46. Destiny' is the state of perfect mechanical causation in which everything is the consequence of everything else. If choice is an illusion, what's life? Consciousness without volition. We'd all be passengers, no more real than model trains.

Nick Harkaway

#47. The mind is still haunted with its old unconscious ways; it broods on lost authorities; and the yearning, the deep and hollowing yearning for divine volition and service is with us still.

Julian Jaynes

#48. My hand moves of its own volition, probably more out of shock than anything else, and I slap him hard right across the face. The room falls silent, and everyone's looking at me like I'm some kind of crazy person.

L. H. Cosway

#49. And this we should believe: that hope and volition can bring us closer to our ultimate goal: justice for all, injustice for no-one.

Eyvind Johnson

#50. Marriage is the harmony of God synchronizing two wills with the will of the Father.

Ravi Zacharias

#51. I just gotta keep reminding myself: Every time I do an interview or something, my volition really has to be just to serve, to help people. Not to feel like I'm important.

Rivers Cuomo

#52. 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

#53. Joel sat back in his chair and laughed at what seemed to be an inside joke, one in which I wanted very much to be let in on. An amiable smile stretched across his lips quoted by perfect dimples. I stared at him wanting nothing more than to indulge myself in that smile.

Shawn Kirsten Maravel

#54. The acquisition of mental skills is a matter of volition and focused effort; it is not a special mystical gift given to the few.

Dalai Lama XIV

#55. The man of wisdom is devoid of ego even though he may appear to use it. His vacant or fasting mind is neither doing anything nor not doing anything. He is outside of volition, neither this nor that. He is everything and nothing.

Ramesh S Balsekar

#56. A world in which deliberate practice is a normal part of life would be one in which people had more volition and satisfaction.

Anders Ericsson

#57. When we watch a play under the standard circumstances, we've lost volition and time is passing. A still play feels like an existential threat.

Richard Greenberg

#58. I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.

Robert A. Heinlein

#59. I knew that she couldn't hear me if she was there. But the sound was enough to grab me, to hold me to hope, and with desperation that I'd never known before I knew that I must find my way back to her.

Shawn Kirsten Maravel

#60. Crow shrugged. "What is death? The loss of a body? The loss of the animating spark? If that's the case, I am dead.
"Or is life the persistence of memory and emotion, volition and desire?" Crow went on, as if in a debate with himself. "If that's the case, I am very much alive.

Cinda Williams Chima

#61. Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

John Banville

#62. My case is a species of madness, only that it is a derangement of the Volition, and not of the intellectual faculties.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#63. Photographers are the new Brahmins: we have no volition when they rule us.

Amit Chaudhuri

#64. The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.

Sigmund Freud

#65. I have a choice. That's why I'm still here.

Amy Neftzger

#66. She whimpered, the sound lost in Mike's mouth. She was entirely his, completely without willpower or volition. His mouth ate at hers, his shoulders curved in to her like some powerful wall of flesh. He moved his hips against her in short, stabbing movements, hands lifting her hips against his.

Lisa Marie Rice

#67. The life of faith can be called the life of the will since faith is impervious to how one feels but chooses through volition to obey God's mind.

Watchman Nee

#68. No one could leave the group by his or her own volition and put the group at risk of having its secrets revealed.

Judith Spencer

#69. What is a human mind? Memories. Memories are data. Character, personality, individual volition. Those are programming.

George R R Martin

#70. I have no knack for volition.

Jill Alexander Essbaum

#71. We write or we are written upon. The whole of our lives is the clumsy attempt to wield the pen with grace.

Vincent Louis Carrella

#72. You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unkowingness, and give up your volition ... You've got to learn not-to-be before you can come into being.

D.H. Lawrence

#73. All athletic accomplishments begin with volition; that is, the desire and willpower necessary to succeed. Volition affects more than thoughts and feelings - it affects physical performance.

Charles Garfield

#74. Empirical debunking cannot reach the deepest fear of the reactionary mind, which is that the state - that devouring leviathan - will soon swallow up all traces of human volition and dignity. The conclusion is based on conservative moral convictions that reason can't shake.

Rick Perlstein

#75. If someone suffers enough pain and abuse, his volitional capacities will diminish to nothing.

David L. Conroy

#76. The ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of bell
buoys,
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which
dropped things are bound to sink
in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor
consciousness.

Marianne Moore

#77. All I knew was that I couldn't have him right now. It was impossible. Could I have him in a year? Two years? Five years? Ten years? I didn't know. All I knew was that although the universe was pushing us together, it was also pushing us apart.

Lily Paradis

#78. You see," I explained to Joshua, "what Joy is doing is ironic, yet that's not her intent. That's the difference between irony and sarcasm. Irony can be spontaneous, while sarcasm requires volition. You have to create sarcasm."
"No kidding?" said Josh.
"Why do I waste my time with you?

Christopher Moore

#79. God the Son, by being truly human without ceasing to be truly God, is both equal to the Father and less than the Father - equal by nature and less by volition to service. By this paradox, the usual logic of equality is turned upside down.

Thomas C. Oden

#80. No one knows, and few conceive, the agony of mind that I have suffered from the time that I was made by circumstances, and not by my volition, a candidate for the Presidency till I was dismissed from that station by the failure of my election.

John Quincy Adams

#81. I've always been accused by my detractors of some sort of moral failure, cowardice, or even lack of humanity by not portraying the human form. I respond that I do better by portraying traces of character and intentions of human volition that no mug or body shot can ever exude.

Robert Polidori

#82. ...and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live. We are wrong, of course, but it doesn't matter. It's too late.

Toni Morrison

#83. When we fall in love, we feel that this person is ours and we are theirs by our mutual volition, and we know they could leave - we know that because they are free, and their freedom is part of the thrill.

Samantha Harvey

#84. Forgetting is something that time takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision.

Simon Wiesenthal

#85. Don Juan, in the teacings of Carlos Castaneda, makes the same point. You have to fool people into seeking knowlege. People will not do it of their own volition.

Frederick Lenz