Determinism Quotes

[L]ife is more than just steering a course around pain.

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

There are but few important events in the affairs of men brought about by their own choice.

From what deep springs of character our personal philosophies issue, we cannot be sure. In philosoph...

if being is many, it must be both like and unlike, and this is impossible, for neither can the like ...

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory....

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one n...

Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so ove...

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Will or nill. Any man who could discover h...

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one...

Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely re...

Life calls the tune, we dance.

I think my dad was so fascinated by this idea because he realizedon some fundamental level that he w...

Lost in these imaginary illusions I forgot my destiny – that of the hunted.

It seemed incredible that this day, a day without warnings or omens, might be that of my implacable ...

You can’t change the past. You can’t even change the future, in the sense that you can only change t...

Can't you see there's a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserv...

thinking about tracking. . . . Sometime in grade school, already your fate was settled, your socialc...

The assumption of an absolute determinism is the essential foundation of every scientific enquiry.

This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with t...

Is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessa...

Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is ...

If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make... So-- as I recall, the off...

There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn't even terrible; it's possibly funny, if...

We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as th...

You don't choose to choose what you choose in life!

Losing a belief in free will has not made me fatalistic—in fact, it has increased my feelings of fre...