I’ve been coerced into free will.

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...

We’re presently in the midst of a third intellectual revolution. The first came with Newton: the planets obey physical laws. The second came with Darwin: biology obeys genetic laws. In today’s third revolution, were coming...

Which do you think is more valuable to humanity?a. Finding ways to tell humans that they have free will despite the incontrovertible fact that their actions are completely dictated by the laws of physics as...

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...

Genetics, accidents of birth or events in early childhood have left criminals’ brains and bodies with measurable flaws predisposing them to committing assault, murder and other antisocial acts. …. Many offenders also have impairments in...

With determination, discipline and hard work all dreams become a reality.

My destiny plays with me in such a wayI feel I play with my destiny.

No one can tell you for certain if we have free will or we don’t. […] Whatever you choose to believe, you will probably want to agree with the philosopher John Locke, who argued that...

The future is certain. It is just not known.

Can’t you see there’s a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.

if being is many, it must be both like and unlike, and this is impossible, for neither can the like be unlike, nor the unlike like

Not accomplishing your Life Plan is a tragic act of free will. It is akin to charting an elaborate vacation itinerary before arriving at your holiday destination, with all kinds of plans for outdoor adventures...

You can’t change the past. You can’t even change the future, in the sense that you can only change the present one moment at a time, stubbornly, until the future unwinds itself into the stories...

We all are characters in a movie.

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...

He did it because he could not help himself, which explains everything and nothing

Hope: Hold on, persistence effort!

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosophers themselves we seem always able to notice some deep internal correspondence between the man and his philosophy. Are our...

I have had my mother’s wing of my genetic ancestry analyzed by the National Geographic tracing service and there it all is: the arrow moving northward from the African savannah, skirting the Mediterranean by way...

Destiny is always a doorstep away, if we know to move in the right direction.

Belief is not subject to the will. Men think as they must. Children do not, and cannot, believe exactly as they were taught. They are not exactly like their parents. They differ in temperament, in...

The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining, just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature.

There’s no such thing as probability,” she says, slowly, with minimal movement of her jaw. “Things turn out the way they do.

Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly...

Be determined.You can make it in life.You can make all your dreams come true.

Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I...