Determinism Quotes

“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

“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

“This is one of man's oldest riddles. How can the independence of human volition be harmonized with the fact that we are integral parts of a universe which is subject to the rigid order of nature's laws?”
― Max Planck, Where Is Science Going?

“Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.”
― Brian Greene

“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.

- Albert Einstein, 1936, responding to a child who wrote and asked if scientists pray; quoted in: Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffmann”
― Albert Einstein

“Can't you see there's a determinism about the fate of nations? They all seem to get what they deserve in the long run.”
― Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

“Genetics, accidents of birth or events in early childhood have left criminals' brains and bodies with measurable flaws predisposing them to committing assault, murder and other antisocial acts.....

Many offenders also have impairments in their autonomic nervous system, the system responsible for the edgy, nervous feeling that can come with emotional arousal. This leads to a fearless, risk-taking personality, perhaps to compensate for chronic under-arousal.

Many convicted criminals, like the Unabomber, have slow heartbeats.

It also gives them lower heart rates, which explains why heart rate is such a good predictor of criminal tendencies. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, for example, had a resting heart rate of just 54 beats per minute, which put him in the bottom 3 per cent of the population.”
― Adrian Raine

“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

“Thought isn't a form of energy. So how on Earth can it change material processes? That question has still not been answered.”
― Vladimir I. Vernadsky

“If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make... So-- as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of hour behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down, one by one, then you can always say, look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to... Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society.”
― Orson Scott Card, Xenocide

“No one can tell you for certain if we have free will or we don't. [...] Whatever you choose to believe, you will probably want to agree with the philosopher John Locke, who argued that the whole debate is largely irrelevant. If it feels to us like free will, then let's treat it as free will and get on with our lives.”
― J.W. Ironmonger, The Coincidence Authority

“The cause-effect sequences in our brains are just as determining, just as inescapable, as anywhere else in Nature.”
― Corliss Lamont

“I think my dad was so fascinated by this idea because he realized
on some fundamental level that he was not in control of his desires:
I think he woke up every morning in his nice house with hardwood
floors and granite countertops and wondered why he desired granite
countertops and hardwood floors, wondered who precisely was
running his life.”
― John Green, Zombicorns

“It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.”
― Arthur Eddington

“I know that certain minds would regard as audacious the idea of relating the laws which preside over the play of our organs to those laws which govern inanimate bodies; but, although novel, this truth is none the less incontestable. To hold that the phenomena of life are entirely distinct from the general phenomena of nature is to commit a grave error, it is to oppose the continued progress of science.”
― Francois Magendie

“It is important to distinguish 'pure chance' from 'chance' or 'accident.' Things may happen by chance or accident in a purely deterministic universe...Now there is perhaps a sense of 'could not have done otherwise' in which whether or not a person could or could not have done otherwise depends on whether or not the universe is deterministic.”
― J.J.C. Smart

“The materialist thinks me a slave because I am not allowed to believe in determinism. I think [the materialist] a slave because he is not allowed to believe in fairies.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Predictability is not how things will go, but how they can go.”
― Raheel Farooq

“Power is something that is out of term.”
― Lena Hussain

“Cleverness have no meanings until you find the stupidity that teach you.”
― Lena Hussain

“Determinists can't help it”
― Jerry DePyper

“My destiny plays with me in such a way
I feel I play with my destiny.”
― Vivake Pathak, God and Destiny

“We all are characters in a movie.”
― Vivake Pathak, God and Destiny

“The concept of Free Will makes no sense unless associated, somehow or the other, with Absolute Determinism; it is just as a man cannot walk without gravity arresting and spurring his pace simultaneously.”
― Raheel Farooq

“You is not you until you see the path of your faith.”
― Lena Hussain

“Our desires are guided by what we believe to be good or bad; our beliefs are directed by our knowledge; our knowledge, in turn, is again a manipulation of our desires. Our Will, during this inexorable revolution, serves as the force, increasing, decreasing, or at worst, maintaining the pace.”
― Raheel Farooq

“Destiny is always a doorstep away, if we know to move in the right direction.”
― K. Hari Kumar