Free Will Quotes - Page 3

• The essence of spiritual life is simply to use our free will properly.

  Radhanath Swami

  Spiritual, Essence, Use

  Radhanath Swami (2014). “Nectar Stream”, p.57, Jaico Publishing House

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• If we accept that we have at least an iota of free will, we cannot throw it back the moment things go wrong. Like a human parent, God will help us when we ask for help, but in a way that will make us more mature, more real, not in a way that will diminish us.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Real, Parent, Way

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage”, p.63, Open Road Media

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• God isn't about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He's all about you making choices--exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won't gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.

  Jim Butcher

  Good Life, Exercise, Choices

  Jim Butcher (2011). “Side Jobs: Stories From The Dresden Files: Stories from the Dresden Files”, p.165, Hachette UK

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• Let all the 'free-will' in the world do all it can with all its strength; it will never give rise to a single instance of ability to avoid being hardened if God does not give the Spirit, or of meriting mercy if it is left to its own strength.

  Martin Luther

  Giving, Doe, World

  J. I. Packer, Martin Luther, O. R. Johnston (1990). “Bondage of the Will, The”, Revell

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• The greatest gift God gave us is also our greatest curse, which is the free will. We are made in God's image, the Bible says, which means we have the ability to love him or not love him, to reject him or not reject him.

  Rick Warren

  Mean, Ability To Love, Made

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• Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, School, Thinking

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• The strongest knowledge (that of the total freedom of the human will) is nonetheless the poorest in successes: for it always has the strongest opponent, human vanity.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Vanity, Opponents, Strongest

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• 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

  Believe, Men, Play

  Interview With Brit Hume, progressive.org. August 1, 2003.

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• The inner man cannot be forced to do out of his own free will, what he should do, except the grace of God change the heart and make it willing.

  Martin Luther

  Heart, Men, Grace

  Martin Luther (2007). “Through the Year with Martin Luther: A Selection of Sermons Celebrating the Feasts and Seasons of the Christian Year”, p.32, Hendrickson Publishers

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• Fate isn’t one straight road…there are forks in it, many different routes to different ends. We have the free will to choose the path.

  Dean Koontz

  Fate, Different, Path

  Dean Koontz (2014). “The Odd Thomas Series 7-Book Bundle: Odd Thomas, Forever Odd, Brother Odd, Odd Hours, Odd Apocalypse, Odd Interlude, Deeply Odd”, p.149, Bantam

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• I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, "You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself." My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Lying, Grace, Return

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• There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

  William Shakespeare

  Fall, Special, Hamlet And Ophelia

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 2, l. [232]

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• 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

  Divine Guidance, Ties, Thrones

  Joseph De Maistre (2011). “The Generative Principle of Political Constitutions: Studies on Sovereignty, Religion, and Enlightenment”, Transaction Publishers

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• Free will is the power of choosing good and evil.

  Origen

  Freedom, Evil, Good And Evil

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• Free-will cannot will good and of necessity serves sin.

  John Calvin

  Sin

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• The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.

  Sigmund Freud

  Attitude, Ideas, People

  Sigmund Freud, Angela Richards (1953). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

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• The metaphysical doctrine of determinism simply asserts that all events in this world are fixed, or unalterable, or predetermined. It does not assert that they are known to anybody, or predictable by scientific means. But it asserts that the future is as little changeable as is the past. Everybody knows what we mean when we say that the past cannot be changed. It is in precisely the same sense that the future cannot be changed, according to metaphysical determinism.

  Karl Popper

  Future, Mean, Science

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• This is plainly to ascribe divinity to 'free will.'

  John Calvin

  Divinity

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• Ye [Anabaptists] be proud contemners of the free grace of God offered to man in Christ Jesus. For with the Pelagians and Papists ye are become teachers of free will, and defenders of your own righteousness

  John Knox

  Teacher, Jesus, Men

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• the whole Pelagian poison of free-will ... a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God ... That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented.

  John Owen

  Idols, Exaltation, Poison

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• This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It's almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.

  Ugo Betti

  Scary, Bits

  Ugo Betti (1964). “Three plays on justice: Landslide. Struggle till dawn. The fugitive”

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• There are no galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love - every man works his oar voluntarily!

  Saint Francis de Sales

  Love, Men, Royal

  Saint Francis de Sales, Aeterna Press (2015). “The Spiritual Maxims of Saint Francis de Sales”, p.8, Aeterna Press

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• Fatalism, whose solving word in all crises of behavior is All striving is vain, will never reign supreme, for the impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.

  William James

  Life, Determination, Successful

  William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.58, 谷月社

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• I have free will, but not of my own choice. I have never freely chosen to have free will. I have to have free will, whether I like it or not!

  Raymond Smullyan

  Choices, Chosen, My Own

  Raymond M. Smullyan, Jason Rosenhouse (2014). “Four Lives: A Celebration of Raymond Smullyan”, p.305, Courier Corporation

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• Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

  William Shakespeare

  Fall, Special, Sparrows

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 2, l. [232]

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