Causal Influence Quotes

Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.

Belief creates the actual fact.

We cannot, even given our most imaginative efforts, construct a concept of Self that does not impute some causal influence of prior mental states on later ones.

What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.

Small events and choices determine the direction of our lives just as small helms determine the directions of great ships.

A CAUSE is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united with it that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other.

Markets can influence the events that they anticipate.

I shall attempt to prove two things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring of circumstances and events, and not of any original determination that they bring into the world; and, secondly, that the great stream of our voluntary actions essentially depends, not upon the direct and immediate impulses of sense, but upon the decisions of the understanding.

Motives are causes experienced from within.

It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause would be unable to influence their inner being.

An intention synchronistically organizes its own fulfillment.

You don't choose what you believe moment to moment, but choices you have made do shape what you come to believe.