Free Will Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old free will quotes, free will sayings, and free will proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism, the way you play it is free will. Jawaharlal Nehru
Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure. Scott Adams
Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. C.S. Lewis
And one who is just of his own free will shall not lack for happiness; and he will never come to utter ruin. Aeschylus
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
If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will...then we may take it it is worth paying. C. S. Lewis
The essence of spiritual life is simply to use our free will properly. Radhanath Swami
The neutral view of free will is impossible. It involves choice without desire. R. C. Sproul
Free will is to mind what chance is to matter. Charles Darwin
Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed. George Macdonald
Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice. Ayn Rand
Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute. Mahatma Gandhi
Mankind has a free will; but it is free to milk cows and to build houses, nothing more. Martin Luther
The greatest judgment which God himself can, in the present life, inflict upon a man is to leave him in the hand of his own boasted 'free'-will. Augustus Toplady
...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. Flannery O'Connor
You can't have it both ways. You can't have both free will and a benevolent higher power who protects you from yourself. Arthur C. Clarke
No one has free will until they are an adult, and by then the choices that were made for them, have already set them on a course that gives limited freedom in the choices to be made. J.D. Stroube
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds. William James
Free will is the power of choosing good and evil. Origen
No tribe unites with another of its own free will. Arthur Keith
One of my core beliefs is that belief itself is a choice that can be made of our own free will. Steve Pavlina
Our hands we open of our own free will, and the good flies, which we can never recall. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Think of destiny more like potentiality because of an element called - free will. Ruben Papian
Contempt for the things people choose of their own free will is, at its heart, contempt for free will. James Lileks
Free will does not enable any man to perform good works, unless he is assisted by grace; indeed, the special grace which the elect alone receive through regeneration. For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all John Calvin
You have fettered yourself of your own free will, man - break the fetters! Halldor Laxness
It is only work that is done as freewill offering to humanity and to nature that does not bring with it any binding attachment. Swami Vivekananda

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