LDS Quotes on Agency
“In striving for ultimate submission, our wills constitute all we really have to give God anyway. The usual gifts and their derivatives we give to him could be stamped justifiably “Return to Sender,” with a capital S. Even when God receives this one gift in return, the fully faithful will receive “all that [He] hath.” (D&C 84:38) What an exchange rate!”
| “Consecrate Thy Performance,” Ensign, May 2002, p. 36
Thus, faith in Christ leads to righteous action, which increases our spiritual capacity and power. Understanding that faith is a principle of action and of power inspires us to exercise our moral agency in compliance with gospel truth, invites the redeeming and strengthening powers of the Savior’s Atonement into our lives, and enlarges the power within us whereby we are agents unto ourselves (see D&C 58:28).
| “Ask in Faith,” Ensign, May 2008, p. 95
“The highest challenge we have in mortality is to use our free agency well, making right choices in the interplay of time and talents. Time is one of the blessings we are given. Generally speaking, it is we who let ourselves get fragmented too much. It is the result of not establishing (and then persisting in) certain priorities in our life. I am not denying the reality of the challenge you put, but neither do I think it is unmanageable.”
| Deposition of a Disciple, 68
“Critical to our knowledge of the plan of happiness is an understanding of the great governing principle of agency.”
“Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God’s greatest gift to man. . . . Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. It is inherent in the spirit of man. It is a divine gift to every normal being. . . . Everyone has this most precious of all life’s endowments – the gift of free agency – man’s inherited and inalienable right.”
| Improvement Era, Feb. 1962, p. 86
“As we consider his incomprehensible suffering for us, surely among the saddest five words our Savior ever uttered were these: ‘Will ye also go away?’ When times are difficult, we can make the choice to turn away from him and struggle through our afflictions alone, or we can make the choice to turn to him and the Father’s plan, finding that we will ‘suffer no manner of afflictions, save it were swallowed up in the joy of Christ.’ My prayer for each of us is to accept the invitation of the sacred Christmas hymn to ‘come, let us adore him’ and our Heavenly Father for his glorious and perfect plan!”
| "Oh, Come, Let Us Adore Him—the Plan!"
“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
“The strongest principle of growth lies in the human choice.”