List Of 20 Quotes About Free Will:
#1 “Free will and destiny are ever-existent. Destiny is the result of past action; it concerns the body. Let the body act as may suit it. Why are you concerned with it? Why do you pay attention to it? Free will and Destiny last as long as the body lasts. But wisdom (jnana) transcends both.
The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Should anything happen, it happens as the result of one’s past actions, of divine will and of other factors.” – Ramana Maharshi
#2 “The question of Free Will has occupied an important place in Western thought and philosophy. But according to Conditioned Genesis, this question does not and cannot arise in Buddhist philosophy. If the whole of existence is relative, conditioned and interdependent, how can will alone be free? Will, which is included in the fourth Aggregate (saṃkhārakkhandha), like any other thought, is conditioned (paṭicca-samuppanna).
So-called ‘freedom’ itself in this world is not absolutely free. That too is conditioned and relative. There is, of course, such a conditioned and relative ‘Free Will’, but not unconditioned and absolute. There can be nothing absolutely free in this world, physical or mental, as everything is conditioned and relative. If Free Will implies a will independent of conditions, independent of cause and effect, such a thing does not exist. How can a will, or anything for that matter, arise without conditions, away from cause and effect, when the whole of life, the whole of existence, is conditioned and relative?” – Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught
#3 “In Hinduism the very idea of free will is non-existent, so there is no word for it. Will is commitment, fixation, bondage.” – Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
#4 “Remove grace, and you have nothing whereby to be saved. Remove free will and you have nothing that could be saved.” – Anselm of Canterbury
#5 “Happiness is only attained by the free will agreeing in its freedom to accord with the will of God.” – Sabine Baring-Gould
#6 “A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
#7 “I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer’s words: ‘Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,’ accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.” – Albert Einstein
#8 “The Ordainer controls the fate of souls in accordance with their past deeds. Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try how hard you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to stop it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.” – Ramana Maharshi
#9 “Only the wise know just where predestination ends and free will begins. Meanwhile, you must keep on doing your best, according to your own clearest understanding. you must long for freedom as the drowning man longs for air. Without sincere longing, you will never find God.” – Paramahansa Yogananda
#10 “Fate and free will are equally powerful forces but I consider free will to be more important as it is your free will that determines your fate.” – Vyasa
#11 “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
#12 “Free will without fate is no more conceivable than spirit without matter, good without evil.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
#13 “Free will is the ability to do gladly that which I must do.” – Carl Jung
#14 “We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.” – Joseph de Maistre
#15 “Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure.” – Scott Adams
#16 “Catholic theology believes that God gave man free will, and you can’t give somebody free will and then send in a play from the sidelines.” – Roger Ebert
#17 “Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.” – George MacDonald
#18 “Free will is something that people struggle with so much, but it’s very simple to me. Carl Jung said at the same moment you’re a protagonist in your own life making choices, you also are the spear carrier, or the extra, in a much larger drama. You’ve got to live with these two opposite ideas at the same time.” – Wayne Dyer
#19 “Free will carried many a soul to hell, but never a soul to heaven.” – Charles Spurgeon
#20 “Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn’t see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will. At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.” – Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby