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Freewill Quotes

Browse 31 quotes about Freewill.

Freewill Quotes

“I no longer want to be anything except what who I am. Who what am I? My answer: I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything who's being-in-the-world affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I've gone which would not have happened if I had come. Nor am I particularly exceptional in this matter; each "I", every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. I repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.”

“Power is given only to those you allow to have power over you. No man was born with a master. The only master of all is the Creator, and he created all men to be free. Freedom is a God-given right, not a human-granted gift. No man should have to fight to breathe in good health and peace.”

“Andrei understood people were social animals who needed others to survive, but arguments that used biological outlines of life always creeped him out. He did not want to consider himself a thing that needed to gather in a group, or regard other evolutionary facts of his species, like needing to procreate or choosing a partner to make one feel safe. No. There were things he could choose between, like Earl Grey or jasmine green tea, children or no children, or having any friends at all.”

“God created every man to be free. The ability to choose whether to live free or enslaved, right or wrong, happy or in fear is something called freewill. Every man was born with freewill. Some people use it, and some people use any excuse not to. Nobody can turn you into a slave unless you allow them. Nobody can make you afraid of anything, unless you allow them. Nobody can tell you to do something wrong, unless you allow them. God never created you to be a slave, man did. God never created division or set up any borders between brothers, man did. God never told you hurt or kill another, man did. And in the end, when God asks you: "Who told you to kill one of my children?" And you tell him, "My leader." He will then ask you, "And are THEY your GOD?”

“Free will affords us two fundamental choices: either we can make conscious choices that draw us closer to God; or we can listen to the physical mind instead of the higher mind, make unconscious choices, and alienate our souls from God.”

“You browse through Netflix or Hotstar to find something interesting to watch. At last, you end up watching your favourite show that you have already watched several times. This world is also a show. But there are many such shows available in parallel realms. When you go to sleep here, your soul browses through the list of other shows, watches a few teasers, but at last comes back to this show because it is attached to the characters of this show.”

“Though I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the Fates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in faces—though I cannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the circumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives which being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced me to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the delusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill and discriminating judgment.”

“Detachment is not a cold, hostile withdrawal; a resigned, despairing acceptance of anything life and people throw our way; a robotical walk through life oblivious to, and totally unaffected by people and problems; a Pollyanna-like ignorant bliss; a shirking of our true responsibilities to ourselves and others; a severing of our relationships. Nor is it a removal of our love and concern... Detachment is based on the premises that each person is responsible for himself, that we can't solve problems that aren't ours to solve, and that worrying doesn't help. We adopt a policy of keeping our hands off other people's responsibilities and tend to our own instead. If people have created some disasters for themselves, we allow them to face their own proverbial music. We allow people to be who they are. We give them the freedom to be responsible and to grow. And we give ourselves that same freedom. We live our own lives to the best of our ability. We strive to ascertain what it is we can change and what we cannot change. Then we stop trying to change things we can't. We do what we can to solve a problem, and then we stop fretting and stewing. If we cannot solve a problem and we have done what we could, we learn to live with, or in spite of, that problem. And we try to live happily — focusing heroically on what is good in our lives today, and feeling grateful for that. We learn the magical lesson that making the most of what we have turns it into more. Detachment involves "present moment living" — living in the here and now. We allow life to happen instead of forcing and trying to control it. We relinquish regrets over the past and fears about the future. We make the most of each day.”

“If something pushes itself into our lives and demands immediate allegiance of us, it will always be less than that which we should give the best of ourselves over to. However, if something stands at a distance and invites us in quiet and unobtrusive tones, and if it then steps away to allow us to settle the matter for ourselves, it is likely worth the whole of our allegiance. Such is God.”

“Almost two hundred sixty-six years ago on my home world, Earth, my forefathers did the same thing. They declared their independence and free agency from an enemy that oppressed them. No one at that time expected this rebellion force to win the war. They were severely outnumbered, and they were extremely inexperienced compared to their enemy. Despite those odds, they succeeded in winning the war, giving them their independence and freewill to choose. (Adrian Palmer, Worlds Without End: The Mission)”

“Now there is discoverable in man, Freewill. His actions are of moral value to him if they are undertaken upon his own initiative; not if they are undertaken under compulsion. Therefore the use of choice is necessary to human dignity. A man deprived of choice is by that the less a man, and this we all show through the repugnance excited in us by unauthorized restraint and subjection, through coercion rather than authority, to another’s will. We cannot do good, or even evil, unless we do it freely; and if we admit the idea of good at all in human society, freedom must be its accompaniment.”

“Anyways, I am not very sure if anything like hypnosis or thought control would make a philosophical zombie. Trying to “program” an already-conscious person does not seem conducive to making a being like a philosophical zombie, because of the freewill in thinking that I discussed while talking about reality and anti-realities. Because a person is free to think, he or she would have to choose whether or not they should be convinced by someone, or submit to hypnosis/programming, in this case. By making this decision, a person would have to sense what they could submit to, and think about it in order to make a decision as to whether or not they should let themselves act based on some kind of programming. These actions require conscious thought, even just a few seconds of it. As of right now, I believe that creating a philosophical zombie, although possibly conceivable depending on what lexicographers and linguists do, may not be possible in real life.”

“Okay, well, if we were to be created in a video game, as Martin pointed out, and there is a creator who has created us and has full control over us because we are merely holograms or animations, then giving credence to this anti-reality would actually be illogical,” I asserted. “As I mentioned earlier, I had to agree with Rene Descartes and the phrase ‘I think. Therefore, I am.’ We have the ability to think, and if we were holograms in the deterministic anti-reality, then we shouldn’t be able to feel, reason, acquire consciousness, or interpret sensory experience, but we do. Living in a deterministic anti-reality like a video game would make us have no control over how we think, but we do have control over how we think, not the creator, so we are not holograms or animations that are controlled by someone, because we have control over our thoughts.” “But what if the creator controls our thoughts?” Martin asked. “That is more proof that we are not living in a deterministic anti-reality. It really reminds me of how Rene Descartes devised the phrase ‘I think. Therefore, I am.’ He reasoned that if there was a devil who came to cause him to THINK that he exists even when he does not, then for him to be able to think that he exists, he has to henceforth exist. Likewise, if our thoughts were to be controlled by a creator, then that would mean we would exist, because for our thoughts to be controlled, we would have to have the ability to think, but since we think, we would have to have had some kind of control over our thoughts at some point of our lives. Once again, a deterministic anti-reality is where we have no control over ourselves, because we are non-real beings created by someone who lives in reality, but since there is no creator who has full control over our thoughts, then we don’t live in a deterministic anti-reality. The closest thing to our thoughts being ‘controlled’ is a change of opinion, like what might happen after being persuaded, but because we have control over our thoughts while we are thinking, our thoughts are not being controlled; WE are just changing them based on our own freewills.”

“Hm. Have you ever read War and Peace, John? I know, I know; I had to read an extract for a literature class once, ended up reading the whole thing It’s not actually as boring as people say, and its central thesis is that the tiniest, most insignificant factors can control the destiny of the world. In its post-script, Tolstoy muses on the concept of free will, on whether or not he really believes in it. He ultimately decides that if all the millions upon millions of factors that weigh upon our choices were fully and completely known, then all could be foreseen and predetermined. But, he argues, it is quite impossible for the human mind to comprehend even a fraction of these. And in that vast, dark space of ignorance lies: free will. Isn’t that marvelous, John? Free will is simply ignorance. It’s just the name we give to the fact that no one can ever really see everything that controls them. Of course, that’s not the real crux of the free will question that’s bothering you at the moment, is it? I think that one probably comes down to whether or not you’re choosing to continue reading this statement out loud.”