#free will – @nickkahler on Tumblr

This easy, indifferent sword must be chance - aye, chance free will and necessity - no wise incompatible - all interweavingly working together. The straight course - free will standing to ply her will between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.

Herman Melville, Moby Dick, 1851 (via darden)

#herman melville #moby dick #easy #indifference #sword #chance #free will #necessity #wise #work #together #thread #restraint #play #sideways #motion #rule #blow #event #lit #literature #quote

nickkahler

The Black Sun imagined by the novelist, whose rays were streams of darkness and frost, was not a more unscientific conception than that of a mighty intelligent Will wholly evil and created for evil alone.

Frances Power Cobbe, "On the Black Sun," c. 1890

#black sun #sun #novelist #ray #darkness #frost #science #concept #will #free will #evil #might #intelligence #frances power cobbe #quote #lit #literature

nickkahler

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Francis Bacon, "On Certainty and Doubt," c. 1600

#francis bacon #quote #certainty #doubt #choice #philosophy #free will #science

nickkahler

Freud wrote a book called Civilization and Its Discontents. It was a powerful attack on the idea that civilization was an expression of human progress. Instead, Freud argued, civilization had actually been constructed to control the dangerous animal forces inside human beings. What was implicit in Freud's argument was that the ideal of individual freedom, which was at the heart of democracy, was impossible. Human beings could never be allowed to truly express themselves because it was too dangerous. They must always be controlled, and would thus always be discontent.

Adam Curtis, Excerpt from The Century of the Self, 2002

#adam curtis #quote #sigmund freud #psychology #self #propaganda #free will #philosophy #thesis