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Quotes from Free Will — Sam Harris

born 1967 United States

← All quotes by Sam Harris

11 quotes

You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost in it. You are the storm.

Free Will (2012)

The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior.

Free Will (2012)

You are either lucky in this department or you aren't—and you cannot make your own luck.

Free Will (2012)

But from a deeper perspective (speaking both objectively and subjectively), thoughts simply arise unauthored and yet author our actions.

Free Will (2012)

I do not choose to choose what I choose.

Free Will (2012)

You are not in control of your mind—because you, as a conscious agent, are only part of your mind, living at the mercy of other parts.

Free Will (2012)

To say that I would have done otherwise had I wanted to is simply to say that I would have lived in a different universe had I been in a different universe.

Free Will (2012)

Speaking from personal experience, I think that losing the sense of free will has only improved my ethics - by increasing my feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and diminishing my sense of entitlement to the fruits of my own good luck.

Free Will (2012)

Our sense of free will results from a failure to appreciate this: We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.

Free Will (2012)

It is generally argued that our experience of free will presents a compelling mystery: On the one hand, we can't make sense of it in scientific terms; on the other, we feel that we are the authors of our own thoughts and actions.

Free Will (2012)

Some moments before you are aware of what you will do next - a time in which you subjectively appear to have complete freedom to behave however you please - your brain has already determined what you will do. You then become conscious of this "decision" and believe that you are in the process of making it.

Free Will (2012)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Sam Harris (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.