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Determinism Quotes

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Determinism Quotes

“Everything I’ve previously attempted in my life was child’s play compared to this. The pathway I’m walking is not just riddled with all manner of uncertainty; it’s also excruciatingly difficult to follow through! How do I know this is the right path for me, when it’s been costing me every ounce of willpower just to stay on track? How do I tell what my purpose is?’ ‘THIS is how you know it, Mario. This moment right here!’ Amanita had told him. ‘If the path you are walking feels back-breaking and steep, know you are climbing the Mountain of Purpose. The more you sacrifice on your journey, the more valuable its end reward.”

PurposeTrialsFree WillDeterminismAngels And DemonsLouise Blackwick QuotesJungian ArchetypesThe Underworld RhapsodyPuppets On StringsHighest Ideal
Book:The Underworld Rhapsody
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“So you put me through all this suffering just to taunt me?’ ‘Humans suffer because they take seriously that which we create for entertainment.’ ‘Oh really? Because let me tell you, I wasn’t the least bit entertained!’ ‘That’s because you were not being entertained, Mr Fantoccio, you were being enlightened,’ stated the Mistress through a pair of foggy eyes. ‘You want to know why painting never worked for you? Because painters are creators and you, Mr Fantoccio, are an overseer. You don’t care about setting up the puppet show; you are merely interested in giving it a good ending. For you, Mr Fantoccio, creating the world was never enough; you aspire to run it. With every breath, you want to shape it. With every choice, you need to control it.”

Free WillDeterminismAngels And DemonsPsychedelicsIndividuationLouise Blackwick QuotesJungian ArchetypesThe Underworld RhapsodyPuppets On StringsStage And Performance
Book:The Underworld Rhapsody
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“We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such an intelligence.”

MindPastScienceTimeUniverseNatureSpacePerfectionIntelligencePhysicsAstronomyCertaintyDataAnalysisFree WillHuman MindEyesPresentComprehensionNaturalismDeterminismMotionOmniscienceFormulaLack Of Free Will
Author:Pierre Simon de Laplace
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“But recently I have learned from discussions with a variety of scientists and other non-philosophers (e.g., the scientists participating with me in the Sean Carroll workshop on the future of naturalism) that they lean the other way: free will, in their view, is obviously incompatible with naturalism, with determinism, and very likely incoherent against any background, so they cheerfully insist that of course they don't have free will, couldn’t have free will, but so what? It has nothing to do with morality or the meaning of life. Their advice to me at the symposium was simple: recast my pressing question as whether naturalism (materialism, determinism, science...) has any implications for what we may call moral competence. For instance, does neuroscience show that we cannot be responsible for our choices, cannot justifiably be praised or blamed, rewarded or punished? Abandon the term 'free will' to the libertarians and other incompatibilists, who can pursue their fantasies untroubled. Note that this is not a dismissal of the important issues; it’s a proposal about which camp gets to use, and define, the term. I am beginning to appreciate the benefits of discarding the term 'free will' altogether, but that course too involves a lot of heavy lifting, if one is to avoid being misunderstood.”

ScienceConsciousnessFree WillNaturalismDeterminismCompatibilismIncompatibilismSean Carroll
Book:Consciousness Explained
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“Our characteristic response to the mutilated statue, the bronze dug up from the earth, is revealing. It is not that we prefer time-worn bas-reliefs, or rusted statuettes as such, nor is it the vestiges of death that grip us in them, but those of life. Mutilation is the scar left by the struggle with Time, and a reminder of it - Time which is as much a part of ancient works of art as the material they are made of, and thrusts up through the fissures, from a dark underworld, where all is at once chaos and determinism.”

ArtMadeEarthLeftDarkStruggleMaterialsResponseChaosAncientCharacteristicsReliefWorks Of ArtScarWornRemindersRevealingStatuesThrustDeterminismUnderworldBronzeMutilation
Author:Andre Malraux
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“For the lost are lost by nature, all your ideas of moral regeneration will make no difference, there is AN INNATE DETERMINISM, there is an undeniable incurability in suicide, crime, idiocy, madness, there is an invincible cuckoldry in man, there is a congenital weakness of the character, a castration of the mind.”

MenMindIdeasCharacterLostDifferencesMoralCrimeWeaknessMadnessSuicideInnateInvincibleDeterminismRegenerationIdiocyCastration
Author:Antonin Artaud
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“Whatever open-border libertarians think about immigration law, once the immigration scofflaw steals, trespasses, or vandalizes private property, said alien is guilty of crimes. To say, moreover, that the state's laws made masses of men and women commit such crimes is to voice the philosophy of determinism, not individualism.”

ThinkingMenMadeSaidStatesPhilosophyLawVoiceCrimeMassMen And WomenPropertyLibertarianStealingImmigrationCommitGuiltyAliensBordersIndividualismPrivate PropertyDeterminismImmigration Laws
Author:Ilana Mercer
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“Our faith in democracy, personal freedoms and human 'rights', and the other comforting prescriptions of the humanist liberal credo stem from the supremacy of maritime over territorial power. Pragmatists may deplore this as crude determinism, as another vain attempt to construct a general theory of history. They should reflect on the sort of political philosophy and structures we might now adhere to had the Habsburgs, Bourbons, Bonaparte, Hitler, Stalin or his heirs prevailed in the titanic world struggles of the past four centuries.”

WorldShouldHumansMayPhilosophyMightPastPoliticalStruggleDemocracyFourRightsCenturyTheoryStructureHuman RightsVainHumanistStemConstructsComfortingPolitical PhilosophyPrescriptionsCrudeHeirsSupremacyDeterminismPersonal FreedomTerritorialBourbonCredoMaritimePragmatistsBonaparte
Book:Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World
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“One good reason for the popularity of "reductionism" among the philosophical outposts of the Western Establishment is that it can be, and is, used as a device for trying to take the wind, so to speak, out of the sails of Marxism. . . . In essence reductionism is a kind of anti-Marxist caricature of Marxist determinism. It is what anti-Marxists pretend that Marxist determinism is.”

TryingKindReasonUsedSpeakWindEssencePhilosophicalWesternDevicesEstablishmentPopularitySailMarxismSpeaks OutMarxistCaricaturesDeterminismReductionism
Book:Cockburn Sums Up: An Autobiography
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“In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.”

IfsMayFactsProblemRunningFieldsDeterminedDislikeLightningTimingLocationBetter OffFoePredictableBoltsInevitabilityDeterminismLightning BoltsOpen Fields
Author:Daniel Dennett
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“Old-fashioned determinism was what we may call hard determinism. It did not shrink from such words as fatality, bondage of the will, necessitation, and the like. Nowadays, we have a soft determinism which abhors harsh words, and, repudiating fatality, necessity, and even predetermination, says that its real name is freedom; for freedom is only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom.”

MayRealHardNamesFreedomHighestUnderstoodHarshOld FashionedBondageShrinksIdenticalDeterminismTrue FreedomFatalityHarsh Words
Book:The Heart of William James
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“The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material conditions and class relations. It denies a will and volition that are capable of shaping the course of history. It denies an individuality that is not reducible to class. It denies both the idea and the reality of freedom, a freedom that is something more than the "bourgeois" freedom to buy and sell. It denies a morality that transcends class interests. And it denies the spirituality of man.”

MenMindIdeasRealitySpiritualityCoursesInterestFreedomConsciousnessClassConditionsMaterialsMoralityCapableRelationIndependentSellsIndividualityDenyCombinationMaterialismMarxismBourgeoisMarxistDeterminismHumanisticVolition
Book:On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society
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“Now, there is something else interesting here, is this thing called self-determinism and pan-determinism. We have found that there is something stands as a barrier between the ability of a person to be self-determined and the condition he is in, and that is willingness to be controlled. As long as a person will resist control, then everything that comes along which threatens to control him can do so; and thus you have aberration. And until he has a total tolerance of control, he cannot be self-determined or pan-determined.”

PersonsLongSelfFoundCan DoAbilityInterestingConditionsDeterminedToleranceBarriersWillingnessControlledDeterminismAberration
Author:L. Ron Hubbard
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“Mathematicians are beginning to view order and chaos as two distinct manifestations of an underlying determinism. And neither state exists in isolation. The typical system can exist in a variety of states, some ordered, some chaotic. Instead of two opposed polarities, there is a continuous spectrum. As harmony and discord combine in musical beauty, so order and chaos combine in mathematical [and physical] beauty.”

ArtTwoStatesOrderViewsBeautyHarmonyChaosMusicalVarietyMathematicalManifestationIsolationAestheticMathematicianTypicalSpectrumChaoticDeterminismDiscordPhysical BeautyPolarityOrder And Chaos
Author:Ian Stewart
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“Recently, results of the Human Genome Project have shattered one of Science's fundamental core beliefs, the concept of genetic determinism. We have been led to believe that our genes determine the character of our lives, yet new research surprisingly reveals that it is the character of our lives that controls our genes. Rather than being victims of our heredity, we are actually masters of our genome.”

BelieveHumansHas BeensCharacterBeliefResultsOur LivesMastersProjectsResearchConceptsVictimFundamentalsDetermineCoreGenesShatteredDeterminismHeredityGenomeCore BeliefsGenome ProjectHuman Genome Project
Author:Bruce H. Lipton
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“Above all, creators remain drawn to the age-old paradoxes that philosophy grapples with [and]...that art occasionally resolves...the problem of the one and the many; unity and variety; determinism and freedom; mechanism and vitalism; good and evil; time and eternity; the plenum and the void; moral absolutism and relativism... These are the basic problems of human existence, and as far as we possibly can we arrange things to forget them.”

HumansArtPhilosophyProblemAgeEvilForgetExistenceMoralEternityUnityCreatorVarietyGood And EvilParadoxResolveVoidMechanismHuman ExistenceDeterminismRelativismAbsolutismMoral Absolutism
Author:Frank Barron
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“One way of saying that is that there is an objective reality beyond our mind. A way to think of this in a philosophic sense is to look between the two great extremes: the idealist philosophy that says mind and consciousness is the only thing and that matter is simply an illusion, or a Maya, the product of mind; and the other extreme, a strict materialist determinism, which says that mind and consciousness is a secondary phenomenon of the collision of matter.”

ThinkingWayMindLooksTwoMatterPhilosophyRealityConsciousnessProductsIllusionExtremesObjectivesOne WayPhenomenonStrictIdealistDeterminismCollisionPhilosophicObjective Reality
Author:Edgar Mitchell
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“The most fundamental challenge of the anthropocene concerns agency. For those who lived the Enlightenment dream (always a minority but an influential one), agency was taken for granted. There were existential threats to agency (e.g., determinism) but philosophy mobilized to refute these threats (e.g., by defending libertarianism) or to defuse them (e.g., by showing that they were compatible with agency).”

PhilosophyDreamChallengesTakenEnlightenmentConcernFundamentalsThreatGrantedAgencyMinoritiesLibertarianismExistentialInfluentialCompatibleDeterminismTaken For Granted
Author:Dale Jamieson
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“Sometimes we can lose the wood for the trees. Some specific issues dealt with in the book [Saving Calvinism]: the scope of election (who is saved?); the nature of the atonement (do we have to hold to penal substitution if we're Reformed?); the scope of the atonement (for whom did Christ die?); whether we have to hold to some sort of theological determinism (God ordains all that comes to pass).”

IfsBookSometimesDiesChristLosesIssuesTreeElectionWoodsSavedSavingScopeTheologicalAtonementDeterminismSubstitutionCalvinism
Author:Oliver D. Crisp
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“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?'”

IfsMenFirstsHelpingHappensPeaceLeadershipInspiringCompassionCharityHelping OthersPriestsServingHelping PeopleStarting OverServing OthersPeace And JusticeDeterminismPeace JusticeRhymingInspirational CharityInspirational ServiceHelping Other PeopleGood KingsSamaritans
Author:Martin Luther King, Jr.
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“My view is, in between environmental determinism and personal responsibility, we say, "where there's a will there's a way." It's not true. You really need both and they're somewhat independent. We must both cultivate will and pave the way. If you inspire an impassioned people so that they have the will but there's no way, all around them are walls with no doors or windows. It's terribly frustrating. On the other hand, if you put a very nice way at their feet and they have no will to follow it, that doesn't produce anything very good either. Will is not way. You need both.”

PeopleResponsibilityNiceInspireWallWindowIndependentEnvironmentalVery GoodFrustratingPersonal ResponsibilityVery NiceDeterminism
Author:David Katz
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“We have opted for petty determinisms - childhood trauma, genetic inheritance, social conditioning, etc. - that have made us comparatively passive. We seem to prefer to find excuses - which are really nothing more than the embrace of determinism, a sort of Stockholm syndrome relative to whatever we can claim as limitation. I am fascinated by the more enabling self-understanding. It has helped me to find my way out of the cloying comforts that are offered by prevalent psychological models.”

ChildhoodComfortEmbraceExcuseTraumaPsychologicalMy WayLimitationRelativePassiveDeterminism
Author:Marilynne Robinson
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