Richard G. Scott Quotes

God gave us our agency. He taught us a way. He showed us what to do. But he gave us our agency and left us free to act as we choose to do.

Why doesn't God just force us to do the things he knows to be right? It is because that would lose precisely that which he has intended in our creation: freely chosen character.

Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.

I will begin with this confession: whatever I have done in the course of my life, whether it be good or evil, has been done freely; I am a free agent.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

I don't mean you disregard every rule of your community. I don't go around naked, for example. I don't run through red lights. The little things, I can obey. But the big things- how we think, what we value- those you must choose yourself. You can't let anyone-or any society- determine those for you. ' -Morrie Schwartz

The distinction between good and evil is meaningless if one does not have the freedom to choose between them.

He was free, free in every way, free to behave like a fool or a machine, free to accept, free to refuse, free to equivocate; to marry, to give up the game, to drag this death weight about with him for years to come. He could do what he liked, no one had the right to advise him, there would be for him no Good or Evil unless he thought them into being.

There is no slave but the creature that wills against its Creator.

God isn't about making good things happen to you, or bad things happen to you. He's all about you making choices--exercising the gift of free will. God wants you to have good things and a good life, but He won't gift wrap them for you. You have to choose the actions that lead you to that life.

Each human being has been granted a virtue: the capacity to choose. For he who does not use this virtue, it becomes a curse - and others will always choose for him.

I started with the belief that every person who came to the laboratory was free to accept or to reject the dictates of authority. This view sustains a conception of human dignity insofar as it sees in each man a capacity for choosing his own behavior. And as it turned out, many subjects did, indeed, choose to reject the experimenter's commands, providing a powerful affirmation of human ideals.

If there are a thousand steps between us and God, He will take all but one. He will leave the final one for us. The choice is ours.

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.

Morality is only moral when it is voluntary.

One might rationally argue that individual human beings should be free choose what moral behavior they approve of, and which they don't, subject to the constraints of the law.

The only possible ethic is to do what one wants to do.

The power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

It is the ability to choose which makes us human.

We all exercise agency in the choices we make.

I should have no use for a paradise in which I should be deprived of the right to prefer hell.

While early childhood experiences may impel, they do not compel. In the end, evil is a matter of choice.

The criterion for free choice can never be an absolute one, but neither is it entirely relative.

You can't tell young people what to do. You can't tell 'em because they'll look at you and say, 'Well, how can you tell me not to do that when you were there doing it yourself?' Or supposedly were doing it yourself. I think you must let everyone live their life the way they have to.