Jim Butcher Quotes

Without that freedom to sin there is also no freedom to love.

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

You are to do the choosing here and now during this exciting and wonderful time on earth. Moral agency, the freedom to choose, is certainly one of God's greatest gifts next to life itself. We have the honorable right to choose; therefore, we need to choose the right. This is not always easy.

To choose evil is to choose freedom, emancipation from all restraint.

We have freedom to do good or evil; yet to make choice of evil, is not to use, but to abuse our freedom.

If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.

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

The more...we consider man to be free, the less we can say, that he can neglect to use reason, or choose evil in preference to good

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

Wrong is wrong only when you are at liberty to choose.

It cannot be called freedom, a freedom which can choose only the right and not the wrong; then that is not freedom.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

I believe firmly that in making ethical decisions, man has the prerogative of true freedom of choice.

How can an act done under compulsion have any moral element in it, seeing that what is moral is the free act of an intelligent being?

Everythings a choice. Nobody's born good. Nobody's born evil. It's always a choice.

Morality pertains only to the sphere of man's free will - only to those actions which are open to his choice.

And does man simply choose evil, or does he create it?

Choice is the essence of ethics: if there were no choice there would be no ethics, no good, no evil; good and evil have meaning only insofar as man is free to choose.

Eve didn't choose to eat the apple. She was tempted by the serpent." "Yes," I argue, thoughts coming out half-formed. "But...she didn't have to take a bite. She chose to.

Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?

The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

If Christ would have left Christian ethics codified on the table, then he wouldn't produce moral beings choosing between good and evil, but conformists fulfilling orders. I think the same can be said about the Bible.

There comes a moment in every life when a choice must be made between right and wrong, between good and evil, between light and darkness. These decisions are made in an instant, but with repercussions that last a lifetime.

Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.