You can do what you will: but at each given moment of your life you can will only one determined thing and by no means anything other than this one.
willquotes
Under presupposition of free will each human action would be an inexplicable miracle – an effect without cause. And if one dares the attempt to make such a liberum arbitrium indifferentiae imaginable to oneself, one will soon become aware that here the understanding quite genuinely comes to a standstill: it has no form for thinking of such a thing.
This need for excitement of the will manifests itself very specially in the discovery and support of card-playing, which is quite peculiarly the expression of the miserable side of humanity.
A man can do as he will, but not will as he will.
I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.
Whence then come my errors? They come from the sole fact that since the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding, I do not restrain it within the same bounds, but extend it also to things which I do not understand: and as the will is of itself indifferent to these, it easily falls into error and sin, and chooses the evil for the good, or the false for the true.
What ability there is in an individual may be measured by the yardstick of how far there is between his understanding and his will. What a person can understand he must also be able to force himself to will. Between understanding and willing is where excuses and evasions have their being.
