quotations about free will
For God, in his love, seeks to transform humanity, but he depends on the cooperation of our free will to achieve that transformation. And we've seen this model before -- recurring throughout salvation history. From Adam and Eve's failure in the Garden, to the horrible levels of debauchery that precipitated the Flood that God orchestrated just a few generations later, to the repeated failure of the Israelites to worship the one true God, and into the years that would follow Jesus' birth and resurrection, as even one of his very own apostles gave him away for a measly bag of silver, the same tale of sinfulness happens again and again.
JIM SCHROEDER
"The Failure of Free Will in Men", National Catholic Register, June 14, 2019
We have limited free will. Our free will goes only so far. Inevitably, the "cosmic magnet" draws us back into incarnation. Occasionally people write to me, and say: "Please, Mr Creme, would you ask your Master to free me from the need to incarnate at all. I don't like it, I don't want it. I want to get out of life altogether. But I know that if I die, I'll just come back. So is there some law that will cancel the need to reincarnate any more? Of course there is not; you do not have the free will to do that. When you are in life, you have the free will to continue or to end your own life; everyone has that right. But you cannot do it without some reverse. If you take your own life, you have to come back and face the same situation. There is no escape until you have learned.
BENJAMIN CREME
The Ageless Wisdom
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.
C.S. LEWIS
The Great Divorce
An object that has no will of its own, capable, if need be, of opposing its creator, and with no qualities other than its creator's, such an object has no independent existence and is incapable of ethical decision.... Therefore Lucifer was perhaps the one who best understood the divine will struggling to create a world and who carried out that will most faithfully. For, by rebelling against God, he became the active principle of a creation which opposed to God a counter-will of its own.
CARL JUNG
Collected Works of C.G. Jung
It might be said that within the limits of the intelligent direction of the intelligent man, there is free will, as far as activity in the human kingdom is concerned. Where no mind activity is present, and where there is no power to discriminate, to analyse and to choose, there is no free will.
ALICE BAILEY
A Treatise on the Seven Rays
We must not think of the problem in terms of a choice between being determined and being free. We must look at it dialectically, and say that man is indeed determined, but that it is open to him to overcome necessity, and that this act is freedom. Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won. The moment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism. He is most enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably settled in freedom.
JACQUES ELLUL
The Technological Society
I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want "free-will" to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground; but because even were there no dangers, I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success.
MARTIN LUTHER
On the Bondage of the Will
It is presumptuous in me to wish to choose my path, because I cannot tell which path is best for me. I must leave it to the Lord, who knows me, to lead me by the path which is best for me, so that in all things His will may be done.
TERESA OF AVILA
Interior Castle
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Elective Affinities
God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.
NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI
The Prince
Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.
C.S. LEWIS
The Problem of Pain
You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next - and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines.
KURT VONNEGUT
Breakfast of Champions
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
On the Bondage of the Will
This error of free will is a special doctrine of the Antichrist.
MARTIN LUTHER
Grund und Ursach aller Artikel D. Martin Luthers so durch römische Bulle unrechtlich verdammt sind
Free will is the promise of a hope that never was.
KARISHMA H. NANDKEOLYAR
"Human interactions are filled with landmines in 2019", Gulf News, June 16, 2019
Most of us fail to appreciate the extent to which our behavior is under situational control, because we prefer to believe that is all is internally generated. We wander around cloaked in an illusion of vulnerability, mis-armed with an arrogance of free will and rationality.
PHILIP ZIMBARDO
"Ten Questions with Dr. Philip Zimbardo", Apr. 26, 2007