Volition Quotes

“I never do anything I don't want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“No one wants to suffer. But that is the fate of each. And some suffer more. Not necessarily of their own volition. It's not about to enduring the suffering. It's about how you endure it.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Wieża Jaskółki

“Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“This was the way he had to go; he had no choice. He had never had any choice. He was only a dreamer.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“‎''I froze. Like an idiot I froze. He was staring right at me. (...) He wore an innocent and mesmerizing smile directed right at me. I did my best to ignore it but having a gorgeously naked man staring at me like I was the only girl in the world was impossible to brush off. ”
― Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Volition

“So, how is it that you don’t have a girlfriend?” I asked boldly.
Joel shrugged.
“Have you ever had a girlfriend?” There was no way that he’d never had a girlfriend.
He shrugged again.
“You’re not serious.”
“You’re surprised?”
“I’m sorry, do you own a mirror?”
Joel laughed in that I’ll-never-understand-women kind of way. “I’ve never wanted one,” he admitted, though it seemed that there was more to it.
“What? A mirror? Or a girlfriend?”
He laughed again, even harder this time. “A girlfriend.”
“Are you gay?”
He smiled. “No, I’m not gay.”
“Oh.” I blushed. Why was I being so nosy all of a sudden?”
― Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Volition

“I knew that she couldn’t hear me if she was there. But the sound was enough to grab me, to hold me to hope, and with desperation that I’d never known before I knew that I must find my way back to her.”
― Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Severance

“The thirst we shared for one another made it clear that the distraction would only come from deprivation. Charlotte was always on my mind. In my dreams, her name balancing fatally on my lips at all times, the scent of her drove me on through my everyday tasks. It was in denying myself of her soft skin and intoxicating presence that I truly began to lose touch.”
― Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Severance

“I was investing more and more of myself into an outcome I couldn’t predict and would very likely be disappointed by. But for me there was no other option.”
― Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Severance

“What a strange creation we are. We are no more than a thin-skinned volition, propelled by intent, through a sea of other people’s coercions.
Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 145”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: A Woman's Guide to Husband Material

“Joel sat back in his chair and laughed at what seemed to be an inside joke, one in which I wanted very much to be let in on. An amiable smile stretched across his lips quoted by perfect dimples. I stared at him wanting nothing more than to indulge myself in that smile.”
― Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Volition

“If someone suffers enough pain and abuse, his volitional capacities will diminish to nothing.”
― David L. Conroy, Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain

“As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“In ancient times, the greatest source of freedom was believed to be self-knowledge, in the Middle Ages - self-discipline, in the modern era - self-determination, while today it is believed to be self-satisfaction. The first liberates the mind, the second the spirit, the third the will, while the fourth - the desire to get rid of the other three.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“I pulled my chair up to the table and Alex sat down, following suit, unable to guard a smile from breaking onto his lips. He was handsome; I had to give him that. His hair was perfectly gelled and his face was smooth and free of stubble. I could even detect the scent of cologne, something I knew him to rarely wear.
“I didn’t expect you to show up,” he admitted.
“Then why’d you invite me?” I hoped that I hadn’t sounded rude.
He chuckled and tucked his napkin into his lap. I did the same. “I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment.”
― Shawn Kirsten Maravel, Severance

“Marriage is the harmony of God synchronizing two wills with the will of the Father.”
― Ravi Zacharias, I, Isaac, Take Thee, Rebekah

“Being able to do whatever we want to do is the most precious natural gift that we possess, but doing only what we ought to do is the only adequate expression of our gratitude for it.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“A man can surely do what he wills to do, but he cannot determine what he wills.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“What he do is him,” Randall said. “What I do is me.”
― Flannery O'Connor, The Enduring Chill

“Power, of course. The primitive fear of being controlled. It does not matter whether it is an invasion from outer space or power wielded from a subterranean command post: some alien force is about to take control on us, to dominate - and, if necessary in the process, to terminate our existence. We never stop to think - or, at best, a secondary consideration is whether such a force might be for the good, that humanity might indeed be improved by such a takeover. Volition, to which we desperately cling, is the very definition of our mature completion as social beings.”
― Wole Soyinka

“In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not attain what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it.”
― Friedrich Engels, On Historical Materialism

“If love in society is to represent a better one, it cannot do so as a peaceful enclave, but only by conscious opposition. This, however, demands precisely the element of voluntariness that the bourgeois, for whom love can never be natural enough, forbid it. Loving means not letting immediacy wither under the omnipresent weight of mediation and economics, and in such fidelity it becomes itself mediated, as a stubborn counter-pressure. He alone loves who has the strength to hold fast to love.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life

“Yet, the existential intellection has disregarded the possibility that a coming-into-being as not a finality but a process and that it is a making of meaning from the ground zero, for we are incomplete beings. Being is nothing but containment of essence, and the precedent-will has to be taken a priori to coming-to-being. Because we are choosing to become a volitional being.”
― Bongha Lee, On Resistism

“His primacy of self and willingness to perpetuate his will go beyond death and toward perfection.”
― Bongha Lee, On Resistism

“التخلف يولد الارادة ... الحضارة تقول ذلك !
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Retardation Generates Volition ... Civilization says so”
― Hesham Nebr

“Así pues: ello sea satis para decirte que tu vocación por el precipicio no es renunciante o censurable: sino reposada, sabia, honestísima: solemne incluso, ya que toda una vida es necesaria para la consumación de la gran caída; et también: rationalissima.”
― Manganelli Giorgio

“In volition, it was said, we grasp ourselves directly as power in action. It seems that once man has this idea, he needed only to extend it to things to create the concept of force”
― Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

“Because I think there are events of another category that are likewise not fixed in a causal chain: acts of volition. Free will is a kind of miracle; when we make a genuine choice, we bring about a result that cannot be reduce to the workings of physical law. Every act of volition is, like the creation of the universe, a first cause.”
― Ted Chiang, Omphalos

“The pulse of intention does not move so that one
Can see it, and moral machinery is not labelled, but
The future of time is determined by the power of volition.”
― Marianne Moore

“The existence of evil does not negate the existence of a loving God; rather, it highlights the complexity of human free will and the need for a greater purpose beyond our present understanding”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua