“What we choose to embrace, to be responsive to, is the purest reflection of who we are and what we love.”
Agency
LDS Quotes on Agency
“The right to make a decision, then, is now ours, and it is the greatest asset we have on earth. The Lord will not, and cannot, and does not intend to take it away from us. He intends for us to use it. He is constantly advising us and teaching us how to use it for our own good and further growth, even to attain eternal life.”
“Notwithstanding the fact that through its misuse, political, economic, and personal liberty are lost, free agency will always endure because it is an eternal principle. However, the free agency possessed by any one person is increased or diminished by the use to which he puts it. Every wrong decision one makes restricts the area in which he can thereafter exercise his agency. The further one goes in the making of wrong decisions in the exercise of free agency, the more difficult it is for him to recover the lost ground. One can, by persisting long enough, reach the point of no return. He then becomes an abject slave. By the exercise of his free agency, he has decreased the area in which he can act, almost to the vanishing point.”
| “The Perfect Law of Liberty,” Ensign, Nov. 1981, p. 45
“Generally our Heavenly Father will not interfere with the agency of another person unless He has a greater purpose for that individual. Two examples come to mind: Saul, who became the Apostle Paul, and Alma the Younger. Both these men were deterred from their unrighteous objective of persecuting and trying to destroy the church of God. Both became great missionaries for the Church. But even as the Lord intervened, they were given choices. Alma, for example, was told, ‘If thou wilt be destroyed of thyself, seek no more to destroy the church of God.’”
| “Know He Is There,” Ensign, February 1994, p. 54
“Exercising agency in a setting that sometimes includes opposition and hardship is what makes life more than a simple multiple-choice test. God is interested in what we are becoming as a result of our choices. He is not satisfied if our exercise of moral agency is simply a robotic effort at keeping some rules. Our Savior wants us to become something, not just do some things. He is endeavoring to make us independently strong – more able to act for ourselves than perhaps those of any prior generation. We must be righteous, even when He withdraws His Spirit, or, as President Brigham Young said, even ‘in the dark.’”
| “Moral Agency,” Ensign, June 2009, p. 53
“I have learned an important lesson. Yes, God can make some good come from evil. But even He, in all His majesty, won’t make the evil go away. Men are free. He won’t control them. There is wickedness in this world.”
| My Story: Elizabeth Smart
“The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.”
“You are right now the sum total of what you have thought, said, seen, heard and done. What you think, say, do, hear and see, cause you to change; to change for good or evil; to become either stronger or weaker; to either internalize the qualities of light or the qualities of darkness. You are responsible for who you are and you are responsible for who you will become.”
| “The Fourth Missionary”
“Agency is a God-given right to choose between good and evil. It is not a right to do anything you please, anytime, for any purpose. Choose between good and evil, right and wrong, truth and error. If I choose, I take the consequences of the choice, for the law works either way. If I choose good, then the spirit of the Lord will be ready to inspire me to fill me with love. If I choose evil, I place myself under the influence of Satan and his helpers and his spirits; I forfeit the influence of good. And as I progress further into the evil, the light of Christ which lightens all men fades away. But my right to choose and to keep on choosing is mine continually. I can turn at any time and reverse myself. I can turn toward good if evil, or I can turn toward evil if good.”
| “The Key to Faith,” BYU Devotional, July 1, 1969, pp. 2-3
“The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!”