Determinist Quotes & Sayings

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it. — Aldous Huxley

If you're on a date and somebody comes up and says, "Oh, I loved you in Harry Potter," it's a bit weird, because you suddenly start thinking, "Oh, God. Is this weird for the other person I'm here with, or is this weird for my family?" But generally speaking, I don't really think because I was thrown into it so young and kind of always had that, it's just something you get used to. And most of the time ... It was interesting. — Daniel Radcliffe

Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify. — Reinhold Niebuhr

The very same 'mystery' that veils the human person from the neurophysiologist veils human history from the Marxian determinist and human morality from the sociobiologist. — Roger Scruton

On the conservative side, today's libertarianism is far more dogmatic and devoid of qualification than the liberalism of Adam Smith or J.S. Mill. Like Marxism, libertarianism is a utopian worldview based on an economic-determinist vision of history. Unlike Marxism, libertarianism is highly specific in its predictions about the transition to the utopian world order, rendering it vulnerable to fact. — Michael Lind

A determinist perspective designed to ensure the people's docile acceptance of the circumstances of their existence: the king, the state, the land? — Simon

The family indeed is dead, if what we mean by it is the modern family system in which units comprised of male breadwinner and female homemaker, married couples, and their offspring dominate the land. But its ghost, the ideology of the family, survives to haunt the consciousness of all those who refuse to confront it. It is time to perform a social autopsy on the corpse of the modern family system so that we may try to lay its troublesome spirit to rest. — Judith Stacey

I am not an economic determinist. If I were, I would throw up my hands; I just would not bother. I think it's wrong to be an economic determinist. I think it's wrong to simply say, "Well, inevitably, if you're poor, you're going to get a lousy education; if you're lower-middle class, the cards are going to be stacked against you, and you'll probably never get anywhere." — Robert Reich

The new media are not ways of relating to us the 'real' world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will. — Marshall McLuhan

I've never quit anything in my life. — Rob Ford

The word is like a seed, and the human mind is so fertile, but only for those kinds of seeds it is prepared for. — Miguel Ruiz

You know, I hate to give advice because my life has been so odd that almost nothing that's happened to me can apply. — William Joyce

Any serious analysis of Marxism must begin with the controversy over whether he is a humanist champion of free will or a determinist. Because Marxian writings on the subject often are so contradictory, it is impossible to know for sure. — Kenneth Deutsch

The meritocratic spectrum of self-determinist, self-help, books are as follows: on one end there's the _ steps towards a path to true bliss. On the other end of the spectrum there's the _ steps to cope with not reaching a path of true bliss. — Chester Elijah Branch

We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a determinist. But I also believe that the decisive choice is seldom the latest choice in the series. More often than not, it will turn out to be some choice made relatively far back in the past. — Arnold J. Toynbee

The base-superstructure metaphor when misunderstood as a causal rather than reciprocal relationship often leads to characterisations of historical materialism as determinist. The superstructure doesn't just reflect the base but has a reciprocal relation with the superstructure often enabling the base, i.e. the forces of production require property rights which are reliant upon political decisions at the level of the superstructure. The material base of every society is capped by an "ideological superstructure" that serves to legitimise and justify the arrangements and institutions in that society. It is from this superstructure that emanates ruling-class ideas and ultimately social consciousness, and thus we can see that the consciousness determined by the superstructure justifies and maintains the economic structure found in the base. — Anonymous

The War is the first and only thing in the world today. The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field. — William Carlos Williams

Let them call me a rebel and welcome. I feel no concern from it. But should I suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul. — Thomas Paine

I don't know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don't know that. But I do know this: that in his heart, he's not an American. He's just not an American. — Mike Coffman

I have seen women who are very interested in tech finish their graduate or undergraduate degrees, but then choose not to pursue a career in tech because they're not sure they want to spend the next 20-30 years in an industry that's very male dominated. — Padmasree Warrior

[On Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz]
The answer is unknowable, but it may not be unreasonable to see him, at least in theological terms, as essentially a deist. He is a determinist: there are no miracles (the events so called being merely instances of infrequently occurring natural laws); Christ has no real role in the system; we live forever, and hence we carry on after our deaths, but then everything - every individual substance - carries on forever. — Peter Loptson

Whether I say to him: "War and Peace is the staging of a determinist vision of history" or "You'd do well to oil the hinges in the garbage room," he will not find that one is any more significant than the other. — Muriel Barbery

Is he a dread genetic determinist, or a dread environmental determinist? He is neither, of course, for both these species of bogeyman are as mythical as werewolves. By increasing the information we have about the various causes of the constraints that limit our current opportunities, he has increased our powers to avoid what we want to avoid, prevent what we want to prevent. Knowledge of the roles of our genes, and the genes of the other species around us, is not the enemy of human freedom, but one of its best friends. — Daniel Dennett

We must name the eminent and fascinating Prince N. - once the vanquisher of female hearts all over Europe. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I used the name Diplo at one show when I was really young, and it just stuck. I never meant to keep it. But it's kinda cool. — Diplo

Wyndham Lewis is basically a pessimist, thinking of human beings as doomed animals or determinist machines. His theory of satire is based on this view, and he finds plenty of evidence to support it in contemporary practice. — Louis MacNeice

The "determinist" swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression "know everything" means nothing. — Paul Valery

Destiny is always a doorstep away, if we know to move in the right direction. — Hari Kumar K

David Brin is a technological determinist. He thinks that we understand the trend and we need to hop on it. I don't have any such illusions. — Bruce Sterling

It is safe to say that the U.S. Congress is now run by paid staffers, not by people elected to do the job. — Barry Goldwater

People are born in a certain place, and in a certain society. I don't mean to sound like a determinist, but to think we're entirely free to do whatever we want betrays a certain class perspective. For most people who have to work for a living, and work at jobs under conditions they may not like, it's just not simple when it comes to freedom. — Thomas Frank

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew. — Albert Einstein

I'm not a techno-determinist. I believe we need to improve our existing human resources, and technology can only be a complement. — Shashi Tharoor

Speaking generally, sociability stands in inverse ratio with age. A little child raises a piteous cry of fright if it is left alone for only a few minutes; and later on, to be shut up by itself is a great punishment. Young people soon get on very friendly terms with one another; it is only the few among them of any nobility of mind who are glad now and then to be alone; - but to spend the whole day thus would be disagreeable. A grown-up man can easily do it; it is little trouble to him to be much alone, and it becomes less and less trouble as he advances in years. An old man who has outlived all his friends, and is either indifferent or dead to the pleasures of life, is in his proper element in solitude; and in individual cases the special tendency to retirement and seclusion will always be in direct proportion to intellectual capacity. For — Arthur Schopenhauer

I like Kanye, and I care about him. — Spike Jonze