Arthur Schopenhauer - A man can do what he wants, but not...

As Schopenhauer said about free will, you can choose whatever you desire, but you’re not free to choose your desires

The most unsparingly pessimistic of philosophers, Arthur Schopenhauer, seems to have seen the emptiness of this sort of life as an unavoidable result of how human desire functions. We spend our days pursuing various accomplishments that we desire to achieve; and yet for any given accomplishment—attaining tenure at your university, say—it’s always t... See more

"You are free to do what you want, but where do your wants come from? ... Where is the freedom in doing what one wants when one's wants are the product of prior causes —which one cannot inspect, and therefore could not choose, and one had absolutely no hand in creating? ... We can't choose what we choose in life. When it seems that we choose what w... See more