Quotes about free will

You said I was a warrior. You told me that was my nature, and I shouldn’t argue with it. Father, you were wrong. I fought because I had to. I can’t choose my nature, but I can choose what I do. And I will choose, because now I'm free.

How many shots does it take before the concept ay choice becomes obsolete?

We live in an infinity of infinities, and we reshape our lives with every passing thought and each unconscious action, threading an ever-changing course through the myriad possibilities of existence. I lie here and ponder the events and decisions that led me to this point, the precise sequence of thoughts and actions that ended – for now – with me having nothing more constructive or urgent to do than think about those very eventualities.

“Choice,” he said heavily. A small smile disturbed his face. “We all think we have so much of that, don’t we?”

You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

"We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask--and to answer--the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, only one question: What is my will? Caine teaches us that the answer is always found within our own experience; our lives provide the structure of the question, and a properly phrased question contains its own answer."

The will of man is unconquerable. Even God cannot conquer it.

Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.

We are made of the stuff of stars, given our lives by a living world, given our selves by time. We are brother to the trees and sister to the sun. We are of such glorious stuff we need not carry pain around like a label. Our duty, as living things, to be sure that pain is not our whole story, for we can choose to be otherwise. As Ellin says, we can choose to dance.

“I do not like the thought of compulsion.”

He shook his head at me. “Not compulsion, Jinian. Information, more like. It is as though I had been given a map which showed both the good roads and the swamps. Is it compulsion to avoid the swamps if one knows they are there?”

A pet. In pets, free will was tolerated only as long as the pet owner found it amusing.

The human will, that force unseen,

The offspring of a deathless soul,

Can hew the way to any goal,

Though walls of granite intervene.