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"I do not believe in free will"
- Albert Einstein, PhD, theoretical physicist

“I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew.”
- Albert Einstein (1928), “Interview with George Viereck"

“I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.” 
- Albert Einstein (1932), “My Credo”, Aug 5

“Objectively, there is, after all, no free will.” 
- Albert Einstein (1946), "Letter to Otto Juliusburger", Apr 11

 

"There is no free will, but don’t worry."
- Sabine Hossenfelder, PhD, theoretical physicist

 

"I Don't Think We Have Any Free Will Whatsoever."
"The world is not deterministic; there’s no free will."
- Robert Sapolsky, PhD, Stanford Professor

 

"You can do what you decide to do — but you cannot decide what you will decide to do."
- Sam Harris, PhD, philosopher

 

"Remember that you are an actor in a drama, of such a kind as the author pleases to make it. If short, of a short one; if long, of a long one. If it is his pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to act well the character assigned you; to choose it is another's."
- Epictetus, Greek philosopher

 

"It's not your fault."
- Sean Maguire - Robin Williams - Good Will Hunting

 

"One doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others."
"This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything...nor ought one to blame others"
- Darwin’s notebooks, quoted in Robert Wright, The Moral Animal, pp. 349-50.

 

“All theory is against free will; all experience is for it.”
- Samuel Johnson - Famous meme caricature of old timey guy studying some book

 

"Where there are two desires in a man’s heart he has no choice between the two but must obey the strongest, there being no such thing as free will in the composition of any human being that ever lived"
- Mark Twain

 

“Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behavior automatic and within the realm of scientific law? Is it only multicelled organisms that have free will, or only mammals? We might think that a chimpanzee is exercising free will when it chooses to chomp on a banana, or a cat when it rips up your sofa, but what about the roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans—a simple creature made of only 959 cells? It probably never thinks, “That was damn tasty bacteria I got to dine on back there,” yet it too has a definite preference in food and will either settle for an unattractive meal or go foraging for something better, depending on recent experience. Is that the exercise of free will?
Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets. Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion"
- Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design

 

 

Note: There being no free will doesn't mean the future is predictable or pre-destined, but it just means we have about as much free will and control as a quarter has about whether it'll land heads or tails, as it's flipping through the air, spinning around the earth, circling around the sun, flying across the universe through time and space.