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Have you ever—like me—found yourself trapped between these two thoughts: “I can do anything” and “Everything happens for a reason“?
There are mornings when we wake up feeling like the architects of our existence—empowered, autonomous, and ready to “smash” everything. And then, there are days when things feel entirely dictated by forces beyond our control—by biology, history, or just the sheer randomness of the universe.
The question of whether we are truly free or simply acting out a pre-determined play is one of the oldest debates in human history. It sits at the heart of our anxiety, guilt, and hope.
Below, I’ve compiled a list of free will quotes that explore this tension from every angle. Specifically, we will look at the crushing weight of responsibility that Sartre speaks of, the scientific arguments suggesting freedom is an illusion, the spiritual surrender to a higher power, and even the humor required to survive the confusion.
Highlights
- The following list is curated from thinkers across various schools of thought—including existentialist philosophers, scientific skeptics, spiritual teachers, and more—with the intention of illuminating how the concept of freedom shapes our character, anxiety, and the search for meaning.
- The aim of this collection is not to provide a single answer, but to serve as a companion for the uncertainty of being human—i.e. validating the weight of your decisions while also acknowledging the mysterious interplay between effort and grace.
Short Free Will Quotes
Man is free at the instant he wants to be.
Voltaire
Liberty starts as a mental shift rather than a physical change. By simply claiming your own agency, the chains of circumstance begin to loosen.
I rebel; therefore I exist.
Albert Camus
Passive acceptance is easy, yet pushing back against the absurd proves you are alive. Your “defiance” defines your humanity.
Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard
Infinite possibilities, ironically, often feel paralyzing rather than liberating. That vertigo you feel is just the vastness of your own potential staring back at you.
Happiness is a choice, not a result.
Ralph Marston
Waiting for perfect conditions usually leads to disappointment. Happiness is something you actively generate, not a prize for finishing a checklist.
Read more: 100 Happy Life Quotes to Illuminate the Day
The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.
Plato
We love to point fingers at fate when things go wrong. True maturity arrives when you own the fallout of your decisions, however heavy.
To will oneself free is also to will others free.
Simone de Beauvoir
You cannot demand autonomy while oppressing those around you. True liberation is a collective effort, not a solitary fortress.
Quotes on free will
Truth is a pathless land.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It’s time to stop looking for a map or a guru to hand you the answers. The spiritual journey is a solo hike through uncharted territory.
Life begins on the other side of despair.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Hitting rock bottom strips away all illusions and pretenses. Once you have nothing left to lose, you finally have the freedom to strive for something real.
Quotes about the Weight of Free Will
Let us reflect on the “burden” and anxiety of having total freedom. (or so it seems)
Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
Jean-Paul Sartre
It is a terrifying burden to realize there are no excuses left. And yet, with that realization comes the motivation to stop succumbing to bad faith—and instead start living authentically.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
Albert Camus
Conformity is the currency of an unfree world. Spending your life living authentically is a revolutionary act itself.
Nothing has ever been more insupportable for a man and a human society than freedom.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Most of us claim to want liberty, but in fact, we often crave the safety of having someone else tell us what to do. Security is a comfortable cage many of us confine ourselves to—without even being aware of it.
Dasein [human existence] is Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself.
Martin Heidegger
We don’t just exist; we are constantly creating ourselves through decisions. You are the sculptor and the clay simultaneously.
Self free will quotes
My freedom is not and cannot be something that I observe as I observe an outward fact; rather it must be something that I decide, moreover, without appeal.
Gabriel Marcel
Autonomy isn’t an object found in the world; it is an internal decree. You declare your independence, and no external force can veto that inner knowledge.
I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both.
Søren Kierkegaard
Overthinking leads to a stalemate where every path looks like a mistake. Sometimes you just have to pick a regret and move forward.
We must always take into account our knowledge that we can destroy ourselves at will… Nothing stops us but our own free choosing.
Sarah Bakewell, ‘At the Existentialist Café’
We hold the power of extinction in our hands; in other words, survival is the result of a daily, conscious choice.
For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Liberty requires the strength to stand apart from the crowd and own your distinct path. It is the distance between the herd and the individual.
Free Will Quotes: Responsibility & Character
How our choices play a crucial role in defining who we are.
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
Viktor Frankl, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’
Even in the darkest suffering, the mind remains a sovereign territory. External chains cannot bind the spirit unless you hand over the key.
Read more: 145 Suffering Quotes – Finding Light in the Darkness
Freedom means that one is responsible for one’s own choices, actions, one’s own life situation.
Irvin Yalom
You are the author of your current predicament, not just the victim of it. Owning your role in the mess is the first step to cleaning it up.
It is in our power to be decent or base… The virtues are voluntary because we are ourselves, in a way, partly responsible for our states of character.
Aristotle
Character isn’t a fixed trait; it is a muscle built through repeated action. You become brave by doing brave things.
We can let the circumstances of our lives harden us… or we can let them soften us… We always have this choice.
Pema Chödrön
Pain can either turn you into stone or crack you open to greater compassion. The event stays the same; however, the alchemy is up to you.
Read more: 68 Empathy Quotes – Awakening to Our Shared Humanity
Who you are is defined by what you’re willing to struggle for.
Mark Manson
Everyone wants the view from the summit, but few want the climb. Identity is forged in the sacrifices you knowingly accept.
Read more: 155 Quotes About Identity & Self – Mirrors of the Soul
Quotes on willpower
Freedom is the capacity to pause in the face of stimuli from many directions at once and, in this pause, to throw one’s weight toward this response rather than that one.
Rollo May
Humanity lives in the split second before action. That brief pause is where destiny is rewritten.
By oneself is evil done; by oneself is one defiled. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself is one made pure.
Dhammapada, Chapter 12, ‘The Self’
Nobody can wash away your internal clutter. Spiritual hygiene is what you have to strive for on your own.
Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
William Jennings Bryan
Waiting for your ship to come in usually means standing at the dock forever. You have to swim out to it.
Free Will is an Illusion Quotes
A philosophical look at the idea that perhaps we aren’t as free as we think.
Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.
Arthur Schopenhauer
You can choose a cake, but you cannot choose to stop liking sugar. The strings pulling your desires are, many times, invisible.
Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making.
Sam Harris
We are biological puppets unaware of the strings. Your “conscious” choice is often just the echo of a neural process that happened milliseconds ago.
You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.
Sam Harris
Stop trying to steer the weather; after all, you are the physics driving the wind. There is no separation between the driver and the vehicle.
This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined.
Baruch Spinoza
Many of us mistake ignorance of our origins for independence. A falling stone, if conscious, might think it chose to fall.
Free will quotes by philosophers
Free will is what we call the biology that we don’t understand on a predictive level yet, and when we do understand it, it stops being free will.
Robert Sapolsky
“Choice”, as demonstrated in this reflection, is a placeholder word for complex neural mechanics we haven’t mapped yet.
It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law.
Stephen Hawking
If the universe follows strict physical laws, it’s very tricky to claim that the brain is an exemption. That is, if everything does follow strictly predetermined laws.
As long as I think that my choices reflect my free will, I have no incentive to investigate what made me choose this or that… This is how belief in free will becomes a big barrier to self-exploration.
Yuval Noah Harari, ‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’
Clinging to the fantasy of total control blinds you to the algorithms and social codes hacking your brain. True insight comes from admitting how easily manipulated human beings are.
Read more: 80 Self Awareness Quotes – Awakening to the Truth of Who You Are
Free will is a myth quotes
There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.
David Hume
The ability to say “yes” is meaningless if “no” entails destruction. Coercion often disguises itself as an option.
Fate vs Free Will Quotes
The interplay between what is written and what we choose.
Freedom and destiny are solemnly promised to one another and linked together in meaning.
Martin Buber
Perhaps fate provides the terrain, and volition decides how we traverse it. They are dance partners, not enemies.
Everything is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given.
Pirkei Avot 3:15
A divine view of the timeline does not negate the validity of one’s decisions in the moment. The destination is (probably) known, but the walking is still yours to do.
Free will quotes Judaism
I hold it to be true that Fortune is the arbiter of one-half of our actions, but that she still leaves us to direct the other half.
Niccolò Machiavelli
Luck controls the cards you are dealt; skill controls how you play the hand. It’s much more constructive to focus on the half you can influence than to overthink about the other half.
Read more: 140 Uncertainty Quotes – Finding Peace in the “Not Knowing”
O, I am fortune’s fool!
Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet, Act 3, Scene 1)
Sometimes, despite our best plans, the universe conspires to trip us up. In such moments, we cannot help but be reminded that we are, after all, just small players on a massive stage.
If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, / Without my stir.
Shakespeare (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3)
Ambition tries to force doors open, but there is wisdom in letting the current carry you. Why struggle if the outcome is not completely within your own hands?
Free will vs determinism quotes
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will.
Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2)
We hack away at life with clumsy tools, but without us knowing, some kind of a greater force is sanding down the edges.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
Shakespeare (Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)
Instead of the horoscope, let us look in the mirror. Subservience is usually a choice we make, not a curse placed upon us.
If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.
Seneca
You cannot fly away from your own mind. Booking a flight to a new city for “self-healing” won’t fix an internal problem.
Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions.
Epictetus
Serenity is found in knowing the difference between your own will and the weather. Just focus entirely on your reactions, and let the rest go.
Read more: 80 Self Control Quotes – Your First & Greatest Triumph
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides.
Karl Jaspers
You are not a finished product sitting on a shelf. You are a verb, a constant unfolding of potential that cannot be easily categorized.
Famous quotes about free will
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
Albert Camus
External conditions may be freezing, but the human spirit carries its own furnace. Resilience is the heat you generate when the world goes cold.
Read more: 90 Resilience Quotes – Finding Fortitude in the Storm
Spiritual Reflections on Free Will
Quotes from sacred texts and spiritual teachers.
I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.
Deuteronomy 30:19
The universe presents a binary moral landscape. Every action tilts the scale toward either growth or decay.
Free will quotes in the Bible
Thus I have explained to you wisdom more secret than all secrets. Ponder it fully, then do as you choose.
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 18, Verse 63
True guidance empowers you rather than commands you. Absorb the wisdom, but remember the final executive order belongs to you.
Free will exists so free will can be given up freely. Such a person feels no genuine delight if he or she is not drained empty.
Rumi
The ultimate use of autonomy is to voluntarily surrender it to something higher. The cup must be emptied to be filled with wine.
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
Robots cannot love; they can only run programs. The risk of hatred is the price of admission for the possibility of genuine affection.
Read more: 84 Unconditional Love Quotes for Every Soul
Free will quotes Christianity
It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.
Buddha
Demons are rarely external entities; they are thoughts we entertain. The battlefield is entirely between your ears.
Whoever wills let them believe, and whoever wills let them disbelieve.
Quran 18:29
Compelled faith is hypocrisy. Belief must be a voluntary leap, or it holds no spiritual weight at all.
Free will quotes Islam
One truly is the protector of oneself; who else could the protector be?
Dhammapada, Verse 160
You are your own bodyguard and your own danger at the same time. Mastering the self provides a security that no fortress can offer.
It is man’s pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Picking between options implies conflict and confusion. True liberation is seeing the truth so clearly that the “right” action is the only one possible.
Read more: 45 Inner Peace Quotes for Tranquility & Harmony
Freedom and God are inseparable. Why? This I know: in my freedom I am not through myself, but am given to myself, for I can fail myself and I cannot force my freedom. Where I am authentically myself, I am certain that I am not through myself. The highest freedom is experienced in freedom from the world, and this freedom is a profound bond with transcendence.
Karl Jaspers
The deepest liberty connects us back to the Source, acknowledging that our agency is a gift.
Read more: 77 Self Reflection Quotes – Looking Inward to Awaken
God gave us free will quote
Free Will Movie & Book Quotes
Pop culture and literary references.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’
We don’t get to choose the era we are born into or the crises we face. We only control how we fill the minutes we are allotted.
There are two ways through life: the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow.
Mrs. O’Brien, ‘The Tree of Life’
One path fights for dominance; the other accepts with humility. It is the eternal struggle between the ego and the soul.
Every path is the right path. Everything could’ve been anything else. And it would have just as much meaning.
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Regret assumes a “better” timeline exists, but perhaps all roads lead to necessary lessons. Meaning is found in the walking, not the specific route.
Read more: 60 Quotes on the Meaning of Life
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
Stanley Kubrick
The stars may not care about us personally, which is terrifying but also liberating. If the universe is a dark room, you are the candle.
Everything’s been decided in advance—that I’m following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me… the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It’s as if my identity’s an orbit that I’ve strayed far away from.
Haruki Murakami, ‘Kafka on the Shore’
Sometimes the harder you struggle for identity, the more lost you become.
Free will book quotes
It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
J. K. Rowling, ‘Harry Potter’
Talent is genetic luck; integrity, on the other hand, is a daily decision. It matters less what you can do, and more what you decide to do.
Read more: 111 Integrity Quotes – Nurture Character & Inner Truth
Funny Free Will Quotes
I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.
Stephen Hawking
Abstract philosophy falls apart when a bus is coming. Even the staunchest fatalist instinctively protects their future. Maybe instead of trying to defend any label, just “become who you are”.
I believe we have free will because we have no choice but to have it.
Christopher Hitchens
A beautiful paradox: we are forced to be free! Nobody can resign from the job of making decisions.
I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.
Albert Einstein
Determinism works in the lab, but not at a dinner party. Civilization relies on the polite fiction that we are all accountable for our mess.
Read more: 63 Accountability Quotes – The Courage to Own Your Life
People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Søren Kierkegaard
Many of us fight for the right to shout, yet rarely exercise the discipline to think. Noise is, as it turns out, just a cover for an empty mind.
Read more: 85 Critical Thinking Quotes – On the Courage to Question
Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.
Albert Camus
The most trivial choice and the most vital one sit side by side. Choosing to sip the caffeine is a vote for continuing the struggle of existence.
Quotes about free will
Final Thoughts
“Free will”, as demonstrated through the perspectives above, isn’t necessarily a binary switch that is either on or off. It is very likely to be more like a muscle—a perspective we choose to adopt.
Even if science one day proves that we are merely biological machines, or if philosophy decides we are entirely at the mercy of the stars, we still have to wake up tomorrow and decide what to have for breakfast. We still have to decide how to treat the person standing in front of us.
Maybe the ultimate freedom isn’t about controlling the storm, but—as Viktor Frankl reminded us—choosing our attitude while we walk through the rain.
Whether you feel like the captain of your ship today or just a passenger enjoying the view, remember that the “pause” between stimulus and response is yours to inhabit!
Other resources you might be interested in:
- 100 Existential Quotes: Rethink One’s Place in the Universe
- 105 Stoic Quotes for a Virtuous & Fulfilling Existence
- 75 Believe in Yourself Quotes: Trusting the Voice Within
- 77 Mindfulness Quotes: Awakening to the Miracles of Life
- 55 Self-discovery Quotes: Know Thyself
Let’s Tread the Path Together, Shall We?
