c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The future is an ever-shifting maze of possibilities until it becomes the present. The future I have shown you tonight is not yet fixed. But it is more likely to become so with the passing of every day because nothing is being done to turn it aside. If you would change it, do as I have told you.
— Terry Brooks, The Scions of Shannara
It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will" owes its persistence to this charm alone; some one is always appearing who feels himself strong enough to refute it.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
...free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply.
— Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood
This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination.
— Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver
How can we be “free” as conscious agents if everything that we consciously intend is caused by events in our brain that we do not intend and of which we are entirely unaware? We can’t.
— Sam Harris
Free Will : "I made you think so."Predestination: "I knew you had to.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Stubbornness" is knowing exactly what you want courageously living by free will; never to be judged or ridiculed.
— Michelle Cruz-Rosado
So saving grace, converting grace, for Augustine, is God's giving us a sovereign joy in God that triumphs over all other joys and therefore sways the will. The will is free to move toward whatever it delights in most fully, but it is not within the power of our will to determine what that sovereign joy will be.
— John Piper
...we are concluding falsely that we can deduce the justification, the rational admissibility of displeasure, from the fact that it exists; and from this false deduction Schopenhauer arrives at his fantastic conclusion of so-called intelligible freedom. But displeasure after the deed need not be rational at all: in fact, it certainly is not rational, for it rests on the erroneous assumption that the deed did not have to follow necessarily. Thus, because he thinks he is free (but not because he is free), man feels remorse and the pangs of conscience.Furthermore, this displeasure is a habit that can be given up; many men do not feel it at all, even after the same actions that cause many other men to feel it. Tied to the development of custom and culture, it is a very changeable thing, and present perhaps only within a relatively short period of world history.No one is responsible for his deeds, no one for his nature; to judge is to be unjust. This is also true when the individual judges himself. The tenet is as bright as sunlight, and yet everyone prefers to walk back into the shadow and untruth - for fear of the consequences.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human
Man’s life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his own consent; his organization does in nowise depend upon himself; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who cause him to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control, which necessarily regulate his mode of existence, give the hue to his way of thinking, and determine his manner of acting. He is good or bad, happy or miserable, wise or foolish, reasonable or irrational, without his will being for any thing in these various states.
— Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach
Liberals tend to understand that a person can be lucky or unlucky in all matters relevant to his success. Conservatives, however, often make a religious fetish of individualism.Many seem to have absolutely no awareness of how fortunate one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, physically healthy, and not bankrupted in middle age by the illness of a spouse.
— Sam Harris, Free Will
The whole struggle was over, and yet there seemed to have been no moment of victory. You might say, if you liked, that the power of choice had been simply set aside and an inflexible destiny substituted for it. On the other hand, you might say he had delivered from the rhetoric of his passions and had emerged in unassailable freedom. Ransom could not for the life of him, see any difference between these two statements. Predestination and freedom were apparently identical. He could no longer see any meaning in the many arguments he had heart on the subject.
— C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
And because God's love is uncoercive and treasures our freedom - if above all he wants us to love him, then we must be left free not to love him - we are free to resist it, deny it, crucify it finally, which we do again and again. This is our terrible freedom, which love refuses to overpower so that, in this, the greatest of all powers, God's power, is itself powerless.
— Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
Hard to grasp democracy without free will.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
You’ve followed Malexia for years. You have done terrible things. So, if as you say, you have a will of your own, did you do those things because you were ordered, or did you do them of your own free will?
— T.T. Escurel, The House of Rose
In fact, if you are faced with the prospect of running across an open field in which lightning bolts are going to be a problem, you are much better off if their timing and location are determined by something, since then they may be predictable by you, and hence avoidable. Determinism is the friend, not the foe, of those who dislike inevitability.
— Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves
Duty eats free will for breakfast.
— Daryl Gregory, Spoonbenders
Laura said faintly, 'I thought God takes care of us.''He does,' Pa said, 'so far as we do what's right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what's right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That's the difference between us and everything else in creation.
— Laura Ingalls Wilder, The Long Winter
Nothing is compulsory. Free will is paramount. But free will comes with the burden of consequences.
— Kelly Sue DeConnick, Bitch Planet, Vol. 1: Extraordinary Machine
Coaching is like a magic mirror, reflecting what you are thinking, feeling and saying about everything in life. By working together, you'll understand your own mirror and change it to become limitless.
— Sultan Alsasi
In reality, man is a mosaic of wills; and the will of each instinct, each desire, each purpose, is the intensity of that instinct, desire or purpose.
— Myerson Abraham Myerson, The Foundations Of Personality
Freedom of will is born from the neurons. And that freedom allows you to sometimes make even the worst decisions ever in your life. And by making the worst decision, you simply learn what would be the better decision in future.
— Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?
Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1
In your daily life, you make dozens of chooses between an alternative with higher overall value and a more tempting but ultimately inferior option.
— Abhijit Naskar, What is Mind?
It made you wonder: How much of our lives was just luck or good timing, and how much was actually choice? How could it be that tiny serendipitous events could change everything? And if lucky events could change everything, could minor mishaps have the same power?
— Aditi Khorana, Mirror in the Sky
The first guy asks the second guy, 'Do you believe in free will?' The second guy answers, 'I have no choice.
— Tim Floreen, Willful Machines
When the Rabbis stated that obedience or disobedience to the commandments depends not on the will of Hashem but on man’s free will, they echoed Jeremiah, who said, “Out of the mouth of the Most High there comes neither the bad nor the good” (Lamentations 3:38). By the bad he meant vice, and by the good he intended virtue, meaning that Hashem does not predetermine any person as bad or good. Since this is so, a person owes it to himself to mourn his sins and transgressions, since he has committed them of his own free will, as Jeremiah says, “For what should a living man mourn? Let every man mourn because of his sins” (Lamentations 3:39). Jeremiah answers his question positively, telling us that the remedy for our disease lies with us. Just as our failings stemmed from our own free will, so do we have the power to repent of our evil deeds.
— Maimonides, Rambam: Shemonah Perakim, The Eight Chapters; Maimonides' Introduction to Ethics of the Fathers; Perek Chelek; Discourse on the World to Come
The wind from the Caribbean blew in the windows along with the racket made by the birds, and Fermina Daza felt in her blood the wild beating of her free will.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Thus he has two standpoints from which he can consider himself...: first, as belonging to the world of sense, under the laws of nature (heteronomy), and, second, as belonging to the intelligible world under laws which, independent of nature, are not empirical but founded only on reason.
— Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
İn ordinary life we don’t give it more attention, but our emotions, mind-set, expectations and the content in which our sensations occur all have a profound influence on perception. It is experimentally proven fact that people who are warned that they are about to taste something bad rate what they do taste more negatively than people who are told that the taste won’t be so bad. Similarly, people who see images of the same baby rate it as stronger and bigger when they are told it is a boy as opposed to when they are told it is a girl. Most of us don’t have so-called free will, as we suppose that we have. Our emotions, expectations and sensations are controlled by others through different forms of ideology — history, religion, political doctrine and so on. They determine where and how your mind should set in order to perceive what is going around you ‘correctly‘. After all that regulation your brain and mind get a chance to function ‘independently’. Your freedom is hidden there. Let me introduce you to the amazing experiment from psychology. In short, in one study 12 students are sent to test a research hypothesis concerning maze learning in rats. Although it was not initially revealed to students, indeed, the students themselves were the object of this experiment but not the rats they were going to examine. 6 of the students were randomly told that the rats they would be testing had been bred to be highly intelligent, whereas the other 6 students were led to believe that the rats had been bred to be unintelligent. However, in reality there were no differences among the rats given to the two groups of students. When the students returned with their data, the result was fascinating. The rats run by students who expected them to be intelligent showed significantly better maze learning than the rats run by students who expected them to be unintelligent. What had happened? All rats were only rats without any intelligence, but there was substantial difference among brains, that is, the ways how they had been manipulated. Somehow the brain manipulation influenced on the mind, despite of the fact that all of them followed, at least it seemed so, the same conditions of the experiment. Familiar situation, isn’t it? There is no apparent intention for subjective interpretation of input signals receiving by the brain, there is even no subjective awareness that your brain might be under any manipulation, whereas your brain and mind are subtly controlled and manipulated to a considerable extent by others through various form of ideologies and you automatically feel, perceive, think and act according to them, as do true bio-social robots.
— Elmar Hussein
You should get more sleep," he remarked. "You won't need so many chemicals."She raised an eyebrow. "This from the man with half his bloodstream registered in the patent office." Jovellanos hadn't had her shots yet. She didn't need them in her current position, but she was too good at her job to stay where she was much longer. Desjardins looked forward to the day when her righteous stance on the Sanctity of Free Will went head-to-head against the legal prerequisites for promotion. She'd probably take one look at the list of perks and the new salary, and cave.He had, anyway.
— Peter Watts, Maelstrom
God decided to create a world where free will was more important than no one ever getting hurt. There must be something stunningly beautiful and remarkable about free will that only God can truly grasp, because God hates, literally abhors, evil, yet He created a world where evil could happen if people chose it.
— Dee Henderson
What remains to be done must be done by you; since in order not to deprive us of our free will and such share of glory as belongs to us, God will not do everything himself.
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
I insist on caprice as a necessary countermeasure to slavery. Otherwise, my own dictatorial mind must take -- unknown to me -- its instructions from a mastermind.
— Norman Lock, The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel
With free will comes inevitable error and misjudgement
— Lauren DeStefano, Perfect Ruin
I know that God is truth, he holds this still—Beyond me he bears all his free will.
— Jonas Perez, Finibus
They say the best things in life are free, and they are if you can afford them.
— Chloe Thurlow, Katie in Love
I could not 'make' you--except by force, which would break your mind.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.
— César Chávez
You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
I came home from work one day and felt compelled to write a book about free will.
— James Tagg, Are the Androids Dreaming Yet? Amazing Brain. Human Communication, Creativity and Free Will.
Love always gives freedom.
— Sunday Adelaja
Every decision that we make based on “free will” is ours to learn from, not for God to punish us
— Dave Shepp
Love was as flawed and terrible and beautiful as we were. To be alive meant looking for it in ourselves and in others, an imperfection searching for an impossible perfection.Because in that journey was where truth resided.Love wasn’t about being held. It was about being freed.
— Emma Raveling, Breaker
God's greatest gift to manIn all the bounty He was moved to makeThroughout creation-the one gift the mostClose to his goodness and the one He callsMost precious-is free will.
— Dante Alighieri, Paradiso
Yet our ability to exercise free will and transcend the most extraordinary obstacles does not make the conditions of our life irrelevant. Most of us struggle and often fail to meet the biggest challenges of our lives. Even the smaller challenges—breaking a bad habit or sticking to a diet—often prove too difficult, even for those of us who are relatively privileged and comfortable in our daily lives. In fact, what is most remarkable about the hundreds of thousands of people who return from prison to their communities each year is not how many fail, but how many somehow manage to survive and stay out of prison against all odds.
— Michelle Alexander
...your life is yours to shape as you wish with free will...
— Dean Koontz, Odd Apocalypse
We have to believe in free will, we have no other choice.
— James Rozoff
A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
— A.W. Tozer
Free will comes at a price. A price most of us do not know how to pay.
— Dimitri Zaik, Magellanic Clouds
Liberty is not an Idea belonging to Volition, or preferring; but to the Person having the Power of doing, or forbearing to do, according as the Mind shall chuse or direct.
— John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That's the divine contract of a little something we call free will.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
He pointed to the right and left. We are unfree, all of us. Only, that does not absolve us of responsibility. Despite our lack of freedom we constantly make decisions and we have to take responsibility for them and their consequences. And so, with every decision we take we become less free.
— Milena Michiko Flašar, I Called Him Necktie
There was as much joy in surrendering free will as exercising it.
— Daryl Gregory, Afterparty
There’s an alternate view. That no man or woman alive is the disempowered victim of another’s degrading circumstance. Each is equipped to pursue their own fate. No one needs saving.
— Janny Wurts, Stormed Fortress
This free will business is a bit terrifying anyway. It's almost pleasanter to obey, and make the most of it.
— Ugo Betti, Three Plays
Insofar as it is true, the idea that our actions or beliefs are merely one link in a causal link that runs back to the beginning of the universe is making a trivial claim. Insofar as it is saying something profound, the claim is untrue.
— Kenan Malik
Unemployment or the loss of income which will always affect some in any society is certainly less degrading if it is the result of misfortune and not deliberately imposed by authority.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
God sovereignly decreed that man should be free to exercise moral choice, and man from the beginning has fulfilled that decree by making his choice between good and evil. When he chooses to do evil, he does not thereby countervail the sovereign will of God but fulfills it, inasmuch as the eternal decree decided not which choice the man should make but that he should be free to make it. If in His absolute freedom God has willed to give man limited freedom, who is there to stay His hand or say, 'What doest thou?' Man’s will is free because God is sovereign. A God less than sovereign could not bestow moral freedom upon His creatures. He would be afraid to do so.
— A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
There's such a thing as free will, Tanner. You didn't have to go along with me, unless you want to admit your brain is ruled by your dick. And I didn't get the impression you regretted any of that.
— Alastair Reynolds, Chasm City
While people will submit to suffering which may hit anyone, they will not so easily submit to suffering which is the result of the decision of authority. It may be bad to be just a cog in an impersonal machine; but it is infinitely worse if we can no longer leave it, if we are tied to our place and to the superiors who have been chosen for us. Dissatisfaction of everybody with his lot will inevitably grow with the consciousness that it is the result of deliberate human decision.
— Friedrich A. Hayek
Your true freedom is making your own decisions.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
The Creator puts life into motion, and doesn’t just sit around all day moving each and every piece this way and that on his whims. If life was just one gigantic board game, God isn’t the banker or the leader, or even a collection of all the players. God is just the one who invented the game. You can be pissed all you want when something awful or even evil happens during the game, but you have no right to go and sue Milton Bradley.
— Sean Patrick Brennan, The Papal Visitor
The only thing that really matters is to be. Man is
—  the rest that he has is by addition.
And so from then onwards, Daniel understood that the point of this grueling sundial project was not merely to plot the curve but to understand why each curve was shaped as it was. To put it another way, Isaac wanted to be able to walk up to a blank wall on a cloudy day, stab a gnomom into it, and draw all of the curves simply by knowing where shadow would pass. This was the same thing as knowing where the sun would be in the sky and that was the same as knowing where the Earth was in its circuit around the sun, and in its daily rotation. Though as months went on, Daniel understood that Isaac wanted to be able to do the same thing even if the blank wall happened to be situated on, say, the moon that Christiaan Huygens had lately discovered revolving around Saturn. Exactly how this might be accomplished was a question with ramifications that extended into such fields as would Isaac, and Daniel for that matter, be thrown out of Trinity College? Were the Earth and all the works of man nearing the end of a long, relentless decay that had begun with the expulsion from Eden, and that would very soon culminate in the apocalypse? Or might things actually be getting better, with the promise of continuing to do so? Did people have souls? Did they have free will?
— Neal Stephenson
Virtue lies in our power, and similarly so does vice; because where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act...
— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
I shall decide what I do. If you say my work is fighting, or healing, or exploring, or whatever you say, I'll always be thinking about it, and if I end up doing that, I'll feel resentful because it'll feel as I didn't have a choice, and if I don't do it, I'll feel guilty because I should. Whatever I do, I will choose it, no one else.
— Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
Each of us, A CEll Of Awareness... imperfect, and incomplete.Genetic blends, with uncertain ends.
— Neil Peart
You are free. The world is yours. got take it.
— Brom, Krampus: The Yule Lord
The thoughts of a prisoner—they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest?
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich
...any object functioning within the physical laws of any particular universe does not have free will ... In terms of human beings, all behavior and cognition cannot appear out of thin air. Behavior and cognition must be the result of prior causes. This is because our brains obey the same laws of a cause and effect physical universe just like any other physical object. All events that occur in the universe are caused by antecedent events.Quantum indeterminacy, which maintains that the state of a system does not determine a unique collection of values for all its measurable properties, is not a valid argument for free will and has been used incorrectly to justify beliefs of independent decision-making. Logically speaking, notions of randomness and indeterminism are actually additional arguments against free will. All events that occur at random in the universe are, by definition, not caused by antecedent events. Or to say it a different way, any random event cannot also be a willed event.By the process of elimination, events that are “willed freely” are events that are neither determined nor random. In other words, in all likelihood events that are “willed freely” are events that simply do not exist.
— Mark J. Solomon, The Evolution of Simulated Universes
[...T]he ways of God have been manifested beyond example: the sea is divided, the cloud has led the way, the rock has poured forth water, it has rained manna, everything has contributed to your greatness; you ought to do the rest. God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.
— Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince
Life is the sum of habits, only occasionally disturbed by a thought.
— Anonymous
Limits are always extended, never broken.
— Raheel Farooq
Free-will followers should learn more about "somebody's bitch".Predestination followers should learn more about "sexual fantasy.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
The answer to the question raised in the title of this essay - Is salvation a matter of divine determination or human responsibility? - is not divine determination or human responsibility. The only thoroughly biblical answer is yes. Scripturally, it is not an 'either-or' but a 'both-and' proposition. Why is this so hard? For one thing, it is logically unsatisfactory and apparently contradictory. Our insatiable appetite for order and answers makes it difficult to admit...that God's ways are not our ways, and leave it at that. (Isaiah 55:9). We don't mind applying this principle in a general, hypothetical way to God's wisdom or methods. But we balk when interferes with our theological system, our obsession with pigeonholing every Bible fact into a neat, orderly arrangement that leaves no questions unanswered. God transcends our logic. He is supra-logical. His thinking, His design, His way, His theology is infinitely above our intellect, beyond the grasp of our comprehension, out of the reach of our clever rationalizations. God is theo-logical. Man is anthropo-logical.
— Layton Talbert
No attempt should be made to "reconcile" Yahweh's hardening of Pharaoh's heart (plagues 6,8,9,10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, that Pharaoh has already demonstrated his recalcitrance, so Yahweh merely helps the process along, or that he is doing what Pharaoh would have done on his own anyway. Rather, 9:12 is a striking reminder of what God has been trying to teach Moses and Israel since the beginning of the Exodus episode: He is in complete control. However Pharaoh might have reacted is given the chance is not brought into the discussion. He is not even given that chance. Yahweh hardens his heart. It is best to allow the tension of the text to remain.
— Peter Enns, Exodus
Every day is a blank canvas to use our free will to create something beautiful for our Creator.
— Alisa Hope Wagner, Eve of Awakening
Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system. Our eyelid closes before we are aware that the fly is about to enter our eye.
— James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The division in human religion has always been between those who see the fall of man as a fall into freedom and those who see it as an act of defiance against the tyranny of an all-powerful father. But Adam and Eve were never in heaven; they were in the mud, and had to leave the only home they had ever known behind. And why? For choosing love and freedom over perpetual infancy and slavery of the will. Their sin was moral responsibility. Their reward is clear: "They have becomes gods--knowing good and evil." And for that, they were condemned to live in a world of discovery and choices.
— R. Joseph Hoffmann
[Pertaining to The Law of Free Will and Karma]: Disputing traditional cause and effect karmic doctrine, Kuan Yin maintains that it is the accumulated beliefs from parallel realities creating “made-up stories” about oneself and, thus, reality. Because of this quantum factor, we have absolute Free Will to attract optimum realities from infinite, simultaneous Evolutionary Potentials. Thus, according to Kuan Yin, where and how skillfully one focuses their intention and attention can determine an outcome.
— Hope Bradford, Beneficial Law of Attraction: The Manifestation Teachings
If God did not arrange [the world] this way, then there must be an independent factor in the universe. And if there is such, one consequence and perhaps two follow. First, the doctrine of creation must be abandoned. A creation ex nihilo would be completely in God's control. Independent forces cannot be created forces, and created forces cannot be independent. Then, second, if the universe is not God's creation, his knowledge of it--past and future--cannot depend on what he intends to do, but on his observation of how it works. In such a case, how could we be sure that God's observations are accurate? How could we be sure that these independent forces will not later show an unsuspected twist that will falsify God's predictions? And, finally, on this view God's knowledge would be empirical, rather than an integral part of his essence, and thus he would be a dependent knower. These objections are insurmountable. We can consistently believe in creation, omnipotence, omniscience, and the divine decree. But we cannot retain sanity and combine any one of these with free will.
— Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason & Revelation
You can't go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it's just a cage.
— Terry Pratchett, Witches Abroad
Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness; on the confines of two everlasting empires, necessity and free will.
— Thomas Carlyle
I think my dad was so fascinated by this idea because he realizedon some fundamental level that he was not in control of his desires:I think he woke up every morning in his nice house with hardwoodfloors and granite countertops and wondered why he desired granitecountertops and hardwood floors, wondered who precisely wasrunning his life.
— John Green, Zombicorns
Technically, according to the notion of the will of God, there is no such a thing as a competent surgeon.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
There is a big park in the middle of the locality. Surrounded by at least 50 houses. That those residents got to live in such a locale is their karma. Do they ever come to the park? To walk, jog, run, play ? That is free will.
— Andy Paula
The limit of a person's will, at least in one respect, is the limit of that person's ability to believe.
— David   Kane, Awareness and Being
Peace adores above everything free discussion and expression without intimidation.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Life's no piece of cake, mind you, but the recipe's my own to fool with.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time.“Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.
— Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
It's not enough, is it? Just to follow; just to have faith in someone bigger and smarter and better informed. That's how we're built, that's how every Partial is wired - to follow orders and trust in our leaders - but it's not enough. It never has been. We've followed our leaders, and sometimes they win and sometimes they lose; we do what they say and we play our part. But this is our decision. Our mission. And when we're done, it will be our victory, or our defeat. I don't want to fail, but if I do, I want to be able to look back and say, 'I did that. I failed. That was all me.
— Dan Wells, Fragments
Freedom that is not fought for, that is not gained by personal sacrifice is freedom that will never last, because in the heart of the one set free, it will have little value. A treasure that costs nothing is a treasure that is easily neglected and lost.
— Bryan Davis, Liberator
The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available.
— Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
We are not self-caused little gods.
— Sam Harris, Free Will
What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?
— Sam Harris, Free Will
As free as you allow others to be, such freedom you create for yourself.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
Free will...it's all the rage these days
— Lauren Kate, Passion
They are talking like fools. They are saying that two and two make nothing. They are saying that a man will have to die to in order to protect his life. If you agree to fight you agree to die. Now if you die to protect your life you aren't alive anyhow so how is there any sense in a thing like that? A man doesn't say I will starve myself to death to keep from starving. He doesn't say I will spend all my money in order to save money. He doesn't say I will burn my house to down in order to keep it from burning. Why then should he be willing to die for the privilege of living?
— Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata--of creatures that worked like machines--would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If I had free will, I would choose to be funnier.
— Stephen  Cave
Mastema prefers absolutes. He wants fences on the world and everything in its place, neat and tidy as a churchyard garden. God is not like that. God is boundless. For all his wisdom, Mastema cannot comprehend Yahweh’s need for surprises. An omniscient Being would naturally yearn for things beyond His control, futures He could not see, wills He could influence but not command. Strange, yes. It is odd when the puppeteer desires his wooden slaves to cut their strings, yet that is exactly what He did when he granted humans free will.
— Kirby Crow, Angels of the Deep
Oh, what an unbearable yoke is free will! What a vicious curse of the gods, granting self-determination to creatures incapable of guiding themselves! What good parent would free a child among tigers?
— J. Robert King, Planar Powers
In my opinion and to the best of my understanding, free-will and pre-determination are two distinctly different economies that are 'operationally co-existent'".
— R. Alan Woods, Apologia: A Collection of Christian Essays
Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies."(Voltaire on his deathbed in response to a priest asking him that he renounce Satan.)
— Voltaire
We do not merely destroy our enemies
—  we change them.
If you have enemies, good that means you stood up for something.
— Eminem
I smile to myself knowing that they may be dead.
— Emilie Autumn
That's ridiculous. The only point in having enemies is so you can defeat them, kill them, brush them aside.""Or give them a chance to redeem themselves.
— Derek Landy, Death Bringer
I have no enemies. I dont permit such a thing. 
— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men
In order to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.
— Chris Bradford, The Way of the Dragon
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
— Thomas Jefferson
Show no fear to your enemies. Only contempt. Never let anyone look down on you. You're just as good as any of them. I don't care who they are. Better in fact. In our world, Dagans are royalty and you, my son, are a prince.
— Sherrilyn Kenyon, Born of Shadows
A man who lies about beer makes enemies
— Stephen King, Pet Sematary
Thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks.
— Henry David Thoreau
You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do no bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
— Victor Hugo, Choses vues 1849-1885
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping.
— Maria Callas
Meg and Belch only had eyes for each other. Not in the usual romantic sense.
— Eoin Colfer, The Wish List
The Master: The cosmos without the Doctor scarcely bears thinking about.
— Terrance Dicks, Doctor Who: The Five Doctors
one day my best friend said to me 'Jess, you rock a lot of polka dots' and that was the deal breaker, now we're mortal enemies
— Zooey Deschanel
The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.
— John Lescroart, A Plague of Secrets
Hate is your enemy
—  you must defeat it! Anger is your enemy
Keep quiet and the enemy will reveal himself.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
Don’t just shun them; don’t kill them! Don’t curse them; don’t harm them! Pray for them, for they all a good part of the story; get understanding, and disarm them with wit and wisdom!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
When you know how to handle people, handle people well, for you may need people one day! Don’t just shun them; don’t kill them! Don’t curse them; don’t harm them! Pray for them, for they are a good part of the story, both for the good and for the bed; get understanding, and disarm the armed who seems to be a threat with wit and wisdom!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
When you know how to handle people, handle people well, for you may need people one day! Don’t just shun them; don’t kill them! Don’t curse them; don’t harm them! Pray for them, for they are a good part of the story, both for the good and for the bad; get understanding, and disarm the armed who seems to be a threat with wit and wisdom! Life is not a one day journey, so be be careful!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
When you know how to handle people, handle people well, for you may need people one day! Don’t just shun them; don’t kill them! Don’t curse them; don’t harm them! Pray for them, for they are a good part of the story, both for the good and for the bad; get understanding, and disarm the armed who seems to be a threat with wit and wisdom! Life is not a one day journey, so be careful!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
There had been no enemies, just one single adversary, herself; her future had been killed by her own imprudence, by the reckless Salina pride; and now, just at the moment when her memories had come alive again after so many years, she found herself even without the solace of being able to blame her own unhappiness on others, a solace which is the last protective device of the desperate.
— Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard
Most people believe that sharing the same flesh and blood, the same basic DNA structure, makes them your family. How sad that is. Because, you see, as a spiritual person, I believe you must deserve a family, not just own it. If those that are my family, don't behave as such, they are not my family. If I have chosen them before I was born, I have been betrayed. I owe them nothing, in this or the many lives to come. In fact, if they betray me in this life, they will return as my enemies in the next. And their karma will make me victorious in that future confrontation.
— Robin Sacredfire
Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and your family even closer because one of them is a backstabber.
— Fightium
Keep your friends close, your enemies close and your family damn close because one of them is a backstabber
— Fightium
Watch your back, little wolf, they say. Enemies arise from unexpected places.
— Marie Lu, The Midnight Star
It will be impossible to catch all the rats, my love,” he says. His hand brushes against mine. “Sooner or later, one will squeeze through the cracks. You need to be more careful.
— Marie Lu, The Midnight Star
A man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies. I have not got one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
If you want to succeed, get some enemies.
— Thomas Edison
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Bury your enemies with success.
— Moosa Rahat
Disagreeing with someone does not mean that they have to be enemies or opponents.
— Christina Engela
I was eleven years old, and I’d lost my mother, and my soul, and the Crucible gave me you.” “It made us roommates,” he says. I shake my head. “We were always more.” “We were enemies.”“You were the centre of my universe,” I say. “Everything else spun around you.
— Rainbow Rowell, Carry On
Ah, there you are, Bard,” came a familiar voice, and she turned to see Alucard striding over.“Saints, is that a dress you’re in? The crew will never believe it.”“You’ve got to be kidding me,” growled Kell.
— V.E. Schwab, A Gathering of Shadows
...nothing cements a friendship like hating the same person.
— Steven Strogatz
Old enemies must be friends when a greater evil looms.
— Raymond E. Feist, Honored Enemy
I suppose you can guess the whole story now? After all, it's a primitive story. A man had two enemies. He was a wise man. And so he discovered that two enemies are better than one.
— G.K. Chesterton
Tragic to kill a friend in battle by mistake when there are so many enemies to go around.
— Raymond E. Feist, Honored Enemy
God can make your enemies your footstool.
— Joel Osteen
Have you ever considered that you shouldn't pray for God to deliver you from your enemies, rather deliver you from yourself so you can not hate them?
— Shannon L. Alder
I was the Reaper and he was the Ghost, and his soul was long overdue for collection
— Quil Carter, The Ghost and the Darkness Volume 2
One misstep was all it took, and it all came crashing down. And they were right there waiting for it—eager and ready to bury me in the wreckage.
— Bianca Scardoni, Inception
Screw friendship. I need more enemies. At least they admit they don't like you.
— Manasa Rao
The best way to destroy your enemies is to make them adopt your worldview
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Some enemies are part and parcel of our lives, we cannot destroy them without risking our own survival
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
The reason people will attack you never really has anything to do with you. It stems from their OWN evil thoughts that they entertain and from wanting and not getting their way.
— Sandra M. Michelle, Shake It Off: Neutralizing the Venom of Poisonous People
We can change people only by becoming their friends, not by becoming their enemies! Make friends with people so that you may be able to change them!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Do not waste time trying to deal with your enemies.
— Sunday Adelaja
Don't make the mistake of underestimating your enemies.
— Bohdi Sanders, Defensive Living: The Other Side of Self-Defense
There are benefits in confrontation. Even though we don’t like it most of the time, but people who obey this demand of life, live in peace better than the others. They avoid conflict and fights, better than others. They are able to identify their friends and enemies faster than others.
— Sunday Adelaja
It is important to give, not only to those closer to us, also to our enemies.
— Sunday Adelaja
...dangers, to Francisco, were merely opportunities for another brilliant performance; there were no battles he could lose, no enemies to beat him.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
Focus on no enemies, liberate armies of truth— give berth to your worldview.
— Kamini Arichandran
...if I only knew how much longer we had to put up with each other's company, I'd start counting the days.
— Anne Frank
The ideological premise, however, "can" not be defective; it is sacrosanct. ... Whatever does not seem right, whatever does not fit, must be explained by something wrong outside of the ideology; for its perfection is beyond all doubt. In (t)his way the ideology immunizes itself by offering more and more hair-splitting accusations. Betrayal and the dark powers of inner and outer enemies lie in wait everywhere. Theories about conspiracies develop and conveniently hide the absurdity of the premise, necessitating and justifying bloody purges.
— Paul Watzlawick, Münchhausen's Pigtail, or Psychotherapy & "Reality"
Give a smile to your enemies and they will go mad wondering what you are plotting against them.
— Amit Abraham
You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight.
— Charles Mackay
You want to take out an enemy? Ignore the things they write, the things they do, the things they say behind your back. Nothing will shut up rumors and innuendo more than to ignore them and diffuse them with silence.
— Robert J. Braathe
I asked him about his enemies. He began to count them. The list went on and on...." - Conversations with Yahya Kemal
— Orhan Pamuk
When you stop worrying about your shortcomings, you deny your enemies, rivals, and/or competitors lethal weapons they may use to attack and defeat you.
— Assegid Habtewold, The 9 Cardinal Building Blocks: For Continued Success in Leadership
We must always be careful never to make more enemies than we could handle if they were all to attack at once.
— A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar
Are these soldiers really our enemy, or only the worst reflection of our own selves?... We made them. We have to unmake them, not just defeat or kill them.
— Kate Elliott, Traitors' Gate
Armise and I had met through the scope of our rifles and sometimes I wondered if that was also where we'd end.
— S.A. McAuley, One Breath One Bullet
It is better to have live followers,then dead enemies.
— eeton101
First, our enemies were the natives, then they were the Nazis, then after a while it was the communists. Finally, at the pinnacle of what we’re calling civilization, our enemies are the Islamic terrorists. Our enemies seem to change over the course of history along with our ways of fighting them. But what hasn't changed is government profit; politicians and leaders seem to always be getting richer by the blood of our soldiers. Makes you wonder who the real enemy has been all this time.
— Bruce Crown, Forlorn Passions
I always felt like you had to be important to have enemies - Q
— John Green, Paper Towns
The most satisfying win over your enemies is to win them in life.
— John Yang aka Private83
Communists and Muslims are not the enemies to fear in this land, Fly. It is the food consumption that will eventually blow up in everyone’s faces.
— Rawi Hage, Carnival
Villains and plots and enemies are simple things to me. But friendships are complicated, and love is harder still. It has wounded me deeper than a sword ever could.
— Jennifer A. Nielsen, The Shadow Throne
We cannot love our enemies until we see those twin truths: God loves me. God loves them.
— Mary E. DeMuth, Wall Around Your Heart
We can retreat and retreat and let ourselves get backed into corners forever. Or we can go out and meet the enemy at the time and place we choose. Not them.
— Richelle Mead, Blood Promise