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The most
intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the
circumstances which they are used to as by their own will.
The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it
were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results
would be null.
-- Walter Bagehot
1826-1877, British Economist,
Critic '
The liberated
man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his
inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes
spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes, and habits
according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes
opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to
opinion polls.
-- Jean Baudrillard
French Postmodern
Philosopher, Writer
Whereas the
Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come
to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason,
which has, as a result, become deadly.
-- Albert Camus
1913-1960, French Existential
Writer
The will is
never free -- it is always attached to an object, a purpose.
It is simply the engine in the car -- it can't steer.
-- Joyce Cary
1888-1957, British Author
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Do what thou
wilt shall be the whole of the law.
-- Aleister Crowley
1875-1947, British Occultist
There are no
galley-slaves in the royal vessel of divine love -- every
man works his oar voluntarily!
-- St. Francis De Sales
1567-1622, Roman Catholic
Bishop, Writer
A man may be a
pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic
believer in the will's freedom after it.
-- Aldous Huxley
1894-1963, British Author
Fatalism,
whose solving word in all crises of behavior is ''All
striving is vain,'' will never reign supreme, for the
impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the
race. Moral creeds which speak to that impulse will be
widely successful in spite of inconsistency, vagueness, and
shadowy determination of expectancy. Man needs a rule for
his will, and will invent one if one be not given him.
-- William James
1842-1910, American
Psychologist, Professor, Author
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