“We are neither radically free to choose our nature nor entirely determined by our biological heritage.”

“We are free to choose our actions,… but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.”

“I shall choose friends among men, but neither slaves nor masters. And I shall choose only such as please me, and them I shall love and respect, but neither command nor obey. And we shall join our hands when we wish, or walk alone when we so desire.”

“When and if we choose to rear our infants and children in an affectional environment of positive reinforcements, then… by the very nature of that environment we will be free and dignified.”

“We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them.”

“For Linnaeus, Homo sapiens was both special and not special. […] Special and not special have come to mean nonbiological and biological, or nurture and nature. These later polarizations are nonsensical. Humans are animals and everything we do lies within our biological potential. […] [T]he statement that humans are animals does not imply that our specific patterns of behavior and social arrangements are in any way directly determined by our genes. Potentiality and determination are different concepts.”

“Put these values together and you can see how the radical middle draws holistically on our entire political tradition. Each value is a sort of updated version of an aspect of our 18th-century political heritage – liberty, equality, happiness, and fraternity, respectively.”

“We do not choose the day of our birth nor may we choose the day of our death, yet choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind.”

“Of our desires some are natural and necessary, others are natural but not necessary; and others are neither natural nor necessary, but are due to groundless opinion.”

“Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”