Quotes about Free will

My free will is a paradoxical partner of the power of intention.

Wise guidance never violates people's Free Will. A superior who demands obedience of his subordinates should show respect for their capacity to understand, and also for their Innate Right to their own Free Will.

If you are ending up where you want to be, what difference does it make whether you went fast or slow? Or what difference does it make whether it was painful before it got really good? Isn't that the point of free will? You get to choose. --- Abraham

The goal of the Creator is for each entity to make a conscious choice to again seek Oneness, out of our own free will – not because anyone else forced us to. If we are told what to do and what to believe, then we have learned nothing and will not make any progress. Perhaps the single most basic realization to make is that we live in a loving Universe. If we are all One Being, then it is foolish for us to hate anyone, as we are only hating ourselves.

You're picky about the car you drive. You're picky about what you wear. You're picky about what you put in your mouth. We want you to be pickier about what you think.

Excerpted from a workshop in Napa, CA on Thursday, February 27th, 1997

"the heart is the birth of will"

Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity.

The Folarians (such was their name) were a pacifistic people who believed in free will, free thought, free love, free land, free living, free rides, freeloading and freebies of all kinds. Bitter enemies of the Vegetarians, the Fruitarians (who lived exclusively on raw fruit), the Pietarians (or “New Fruitarians,” as they were sometimes called, who ate only raw fruit pies) and the Breatharians (who subsisted on air alone), the Folarians promoted a doctrine wherein eternal life was achieved by abstaining from all food sources save foliage—thus their name. Moreover, this foliage—whether leaves, stems or flowers—must already have fallen to the ground of its own accord. This way, eating only nature’s leftovers, the Folarians lived in perfect harmony with Mother Earth.

 "There are the waves and there is the wind, seen and unseen forces. Everyone has these same elements in their lives, the seen and unseen, karma and free will. The question is, 'how are you going to handle what you have?'"

"Many don't understand the power of love, that it is there for them if they choose to accept it. Of course, just because it's there, doesn't necessarily mean they'll accept it. Like a seed, it will always be there. Because of free will, humans can accept or reject that love. We, who so much wish to have the love we send, be received, have to remain somewhat detached."

"The cool thing about free will is that even if one has a huge bag of karma there is still a lot of free will for all those souls coming into the world."

"There is planetary karmic build-up. It's nothing the planet did: more like a pattern of energy on the planet," replies Kuan Yin. "Whenever an event occurs, there is a "planetary imprint". Energies are drawn to that imprint. Energies are then drawn to the existing energies.The energies that are here on earth have free will. When you mix free will you get certain deviants. It is intended to be a planet for this purpose. Earth represents a certain grade similar to a school. It's all a grand experiment. It's possible to completely re-create this earth," insists Kuan Yin. "You'll kill yourselves before you kill the earth...We're talking in dualities because dualities are built into your language. You think that just because there is an absence of good, for instance, that evil exists. This is not so. In fact, things are far more intricate."

As human beings imbued with free will, we can use the power of our consciousness to re-create our reality: including but not limited to a body, mind and spirit free of disease.

The member of a contractual society is free because he serves others only in serving himself. What restrains him is only the inevitable natural phenomenon of scarcity.

Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that.

The vigorous man industriously striving for the improvement of his condition acts neither more nor less than the lethargic man who sluggishly takes things as they come. For to do nothing and to be idle are also action, they too determine the course of events.

This process, this method necessary to man’s survival and prosperity upon the earth, has often been derided as unduly or exclusively “materialistic.” But it should be clear that what has happened in this activity proper to man’s nature is a fusion of “spirit” and matter; man’s mind, using the ideas it has learned, directs his energy in transforming and reshaping matter into ways to sustain and advance his wants and his life. Behind every “produced” good, behind every man-made transformation of natural resources, is an idea directing the effort, a manifestation of man’s spirit.

The individual man, in introspecting the fact of his own consciousness, also discovers the primordial natural fact of his freedom: his freedom to choose, his freedom to use or not use his reason about any given subject. In short, the natural fact of his “free will.” He also discovers the natural fact of his mind’s command over his body and its actions: that is, of his natural ownership over his self.

So in this case, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, 'This contemplative is our teacher.' When you know for yourselves that, 'These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering' — then you should abandon them.

Katsumoto: "Do you believe a man can change his destiny?"
Algren: "I believe a man does what he can until his destiny is revealed."

Like fanning through a deck of cards, my mind flashes on the thousand chances, trivial to profound, that converged to re-create this place.  Any arbitrary turning along the way and I would be elsewhere; I would be different... My rational thought processes cling always to the idea of free will, random event; my blood, however, streams easily along a current of fate.  I'm here because I climbed out the window at night when I was four.