Neal A. Maxwell Quotes

But to procrastinate and prevaricate simply because you're afraid of erring, when others - I mean our brethren in Germany - must make infinitely more difficult decisions every day, seems to me almost to run counter to love. To delay or fail to make decisions may be more sinful than to make wrong decisions out of faith and love.

When I got the money, the whole burden descended on me, and the realization of what I had done. And it led me then to make the further step, a change of loyalties.

What is deferred is not avoided.

I know I have to do the right thing. And the sooner you do the right thing, the better. You get it over with, and you don't have to worry about it anymore. But who does that in real life? Instead, you procrastinate and think about it and put it off and think about it some more until that one little pebble grows into a giant block inside your head.

A first impulse was never a crime.

They are focused on whether they can do something. They never think whether they should do something.

I would say of characters I've created, the one I've felt the most connected to emotionally was Adam Austin from 'The Prophet.' I think it was the connection to the idea that one decision you make innocently enough can have very serious, drastic consequences for someone else's life.

I. Hate. Excuses. Excuses are a disease.

It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

I actively avoided responsibility for as long as I possibly could.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.

The real question is: How do you react? What do you do next? Evade responsibilities? Bury yourself in work? What do you do? All three of my novels take up that question, although none gives an answer.

There's no such thing as coulda, shoulda, or woulda. If you shoulda and coulda, you woulda done it.

Politicians don't like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your responsibilities at work, and you get fired. Ignore your car's gas gauge, and you get stranded.

Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

It's better to choose the culprits than to seek them out.

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

In this life, we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices.

Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right than to be responsible and wrong.

Men's common guise is always to lay the burden on some other back.

If officials on the spot commit in good faith an error of judgment, which is worse—to support them or to throw them over?

Men are only too clever at shifting blame from their own shoulders to those of others.

The resolution to avoid evil is seldom framed till the evil is so far advanced as to make avoidance impossible.