Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
1055
AUTHOR:
Jonathan Edwards (1703–58)
QUOTATION:
True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will.
ATTRIBUTION:
Attributed to JONATHAN EDWARDS.—George Seldes, The Great Quotations, p. 220 (1966). Unverified.
In the editor’s introduction to Edwards’s Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey, p. 12 (1957), is a succinct summary of a portion of Edwards’s definition of terms, part 1, section 5 (p. 164): “In other words, a man is free to do what he wills, but not to do what he does not will.”
