I’ve been coerced into free will.

I know that certain minds would regard as audacious the idea of relating the laws which preside over the play of our organs to those laws which govern inanimate bodies; but, although novel, this truth...

Genes do not make an individual homosexual. They play their part, but so does the rest of the universe.

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.

willed freely” are events that simply do not exist.

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleological, both valid, neither...

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.

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...

Thought isn’t a form of energy. So how on Earth can it change material processes? That question has still not been answered.

Know, then, that now, precisely now, these people are more certain than ever before that they are completely free, and at the same time they themselves have brought us their freedom and obediently laid it...

Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much...

Women, churchgoers, and conservative were more likely than men, nonchurch goers, and liberals to disagree with the reductionist (neural) account of human life.

Cleverness have no meanings until you find the stupidity that teach you.

There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.

It is important to distinguish ‘pure chance’ from ‘chance’ or ‘accident.’ Things may happen by chance or accident in a purely deterministic universe…Now there is perhaps a sense of ‘could not have done otherwise’ in...

Few indeed are those who get a choice. We do as we are told. We stand or fall beside those who were born near to us, who look as we do, who speak the same...

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...

Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire...

Determinism gives you the freedom to do whatever you like.

Evolutionary biology is imperialistic, overtaking entire fields of endeavor simply by attaching the prefix bio – or neuro — to their names: bioethics, no comics, even, God help us, neurotheology. Its logic is deployed against...

Power is something that is out of term.

Not only are there meaningless questions, but many of the problems with which the human intellect has tortured itself turn out to be only ‘pseudo problems,’ because they can be formulated only in terms of...

The two go hand in hand like a dance: chance flirts with necessity, randomness with determinism. To be sure, it is from this interchange that novelty and creativity arise in Nature, thereby yielding unique forms...

Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no...

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one...

The concept of Free Will makes no sense unless associated, somehow or the other, with Absolute Determinism; it is just as a man cannot walk without gravity arresting and spurring his pace simultaneously.

Der Mensch kann tun was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will.Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.

You is not you until you see the path of your faith.

lchiyuken was a low class servant in the kitchen of Lord Takanobu. Because of some grudge he had over a matter of wrestling, he cut down seven or eight men and was hence ordered to...

… Nature almost surely operates by combining chance with necessity, randomness with determinism…

Life calls the tune, we dance.

[The materialist] thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think [the materialist] a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies.

Predictability is not how things will go, but how they can go.

Human freedom brings with it the burden of choice and of its consequences. As humankind is akin to claim for its own special privilege a certain unique destiny not afforded with equal measure to other...

Believe in yourself. Determine to pursue your goals.

Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his...

Not that chance dominated events in the early Solar System, for scientific determinism was also functioning. But chance is an essential factor in all evolutionary events, and the birth and development of our planetary system...

If God created our will, then he’s responsible for every choice we make… So– as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn’t exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the...

Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly...

Limits are always extended, never broken.

You can get what you want in life.You must reach out with all your heart.

…if in the heat of the dispute he insists and asks, ‘Am I not the master of throwing myself out of the window?’ I shall answer him, no; that whilst he preserves his reason there...

Many scientists have tried to make determinism and complementarity the basis of conclusions that seem to me weak and dangerous; for instance, they have used Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle to bolster up human free will, though...

Sometimes evil didn’t need an excuse. Sometimes evil just was.

I think my dad was so fascinated by this idea because he realizedon some fundamental level that he was not in control of his desires:I think he woke up every morning in his nice house...

Our desires are guided by what we believe to be good or bad; our beliefs are directed by our knowledge; our knowledge, in turn, is again a manipulation of our desires. Our Will, during this...

Freedom is inevitable; it is only the matter of the form in which it occurs. I think it is not the freedom per se that matters but the capacity to absorb it. I could have...

Free will, determinism, meaning, existence, etc. are academic problems, not problems in life.

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

At one conference Hameroff told Dennett, publicly, “You know, Dan, maybe the reason you like this [mechanistic] idea is because you’re a zombie. And maybe the reason I see things differently is because, I’m not.”Hameroff...