“I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all.”

— Basil King

Source: The Conquest of Fear (1921), Chapter III : God And His Self-Expression, § VIII
Context: I was to see myself as God's Self-Expression working with others who were also His Self-Expression to the same extent as I. It was in the fact of our uniting together to produce His Self-Expression that I was to look for my security. No one could effectively work against me while I was consciously trying to work with God. Moreover, it was probable that no one was working against me, or had any intention of working against me, but that my own point of view being wrong I had put the harmonious action of my life out of order. Suspicion always being likely to see what it suspects the chances were many that I was creating the very thing I suffered from.
This does not mean that in our effort to reproduce harmonious action we should shut our eyes to what is evidently wrong, or blandly ignore what is plainly being done to our disadvantage. Of course not! One uses all the common-sense methods of getting justice for oneself and protecting one's own interests. But it does mean that when I can no longer protect my own interests, when my affairs depend upon others far more than on myself — a condition in which we all occasionally find ourselves — I am not to fret myself, not to churn my spirit into nameless fears. I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresse…" by Basil King?

Basil King 5

Canadian writer 1859–1928

Related quotes

“Man is a free agent; but he is not free if he does not believe it”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

.
History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, Preface, p. 26
Referenced

“By constantly repeating, "I am free, I am free", a man verily becomes free. On the other hand, by constantly repeating, "I am bound, I am bound", he certainly becomes bound to worldliness. The fool who says only, "I am a sinner, I am a sinner", verily drowns himself in worldliness. One should rather say: "I have chanted the name of God. How can I be a sinner? How can I be bound?"”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 274

“Am I a free agent, or am I merely the manifestation of a foreign power? Neither appear sufficiently well founded. By the most courageous resolve of my life am I reduced to this! what Power can save me from it, from myself?”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte book The Vocation of Man

Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 24
The Vocation of Man (1800), Doubt

“No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself. No man is free who cannot command himself.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

“I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

“Now that I'm a free agent I mean to make my own choices, and explain them to nobody if that’s what pleases me.”

James Blish book A Case of Conscience

Source: A Case of Conscience (1958), Chapter 17 (p. 206)

“Reason is a free gift from God and politeness is acquisition. He who undertakes politeness has power over it. He who undertakes reason increases (himself) through that nothing but ignorance.”

Ali al-Rida (770–818) eighth of the Twelve Imams

Muhammad Kulayni, Usūl al-Kāfī, vol.1, p. 23.
Religious Wisdom

“There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, — namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life.”

Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher

I.
Outline of the Doctrine of Knowledge (1810)
Context: The Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from all special and definite knowing, proceeds immediately upon Knowledge itself, in the essential unity in which it recognises Knowledge as existing; and it raises this question in the first place — How this Knowledge can come into being, and what it is in its inward and essential Nature?
The following must be apparent: — There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, — namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life. He can neither change nor determine himself in aught within himself, nor become any other Being; for his Being contains within it all his Being and all possible Being, and neither within him nor out of him can any new Being arise.

“This race and this country and this life produced me, he said. I shall express myself as I am.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“As a single atom man is an enigma: as a whole he is a mathematical problem. As an individual he is a free agent, as a species the offspring of necessity.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter II, "Religion", pp. 143-4.

“I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Basil King 5

Related quotes

Related topics