Free Will — Sam Harris

In Free Will, Sam harris argues that the idea that we have free will is an illusion. Below are some quotes from the book:

• A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.
• You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do.
• Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime - by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?
• We do not know what we intend to do until the intention itself arises. To understand this is to realize that we are not the authors of our thoughts and actions in the way that people generally suppose.
• If you pay attention to your inner life, you will see that the emergence of choices, efforts, and intentions is a fundamentally mysterious process.
• My choices matter—and there are paths towards making wiser ones—but I cannot choose what I choose. And if it ever appears that I do—for instance, after going back between two options—I do not choose to choose what I choose.
• What evidence could possibly be put forward to show that one could have acted differently in the past?
• The urge for retribution depends upon our not seeing the underlying causes of human behavior.