# Free Will (Sam Harris)
* Am I free to do that which does not occur to me to do? Of course not. (p. 19)
* Compatibilism amounts to nothing more than an assertion of the following creed: A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings. (p. 20)
* People feel that they are the authors of their thoughts and actions, and this is the only reason why there seems to be a problem of free will worth talking about. (p. 26)
* You are no more responsible for the next thing you think (and therefore do) than you are for the fact that you were born into this world. (p. 34)
* You can do what you decide to do—but you cannot decide what you will decide to do. (p. 38)
* 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. (p. 45)
* Thoughts and intentions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do? (p. 64)
* The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion. (p. 64)
* Most people’s view of the mind is implicitly dualist and libertarian and not materialist and compatibilist. . . . That is, it requires the rejection of determinism and an implicit commitment to some kind of magical mental causation . . . contrary to legal and philosophical orthodoxy, determinism really does threaten free will and responsibility as we intuitively understand them (p. 74)
* Einstein (following Schopenhauer) once made the same point: Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills). (p. 75)
* As Jerry Coyne points out (personal communication), this notion of counterfactual freedom is also scientifically untestable. What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past? (p. 76)