Dallas Willard Quotes

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.

Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.

No enduring improvement can occur without righteous exercise of agency. Do not attempt to override agency. The Lord himself would not do that. Forced obedience yields no blessings.

As long as you're not hurting anyone, your choices are your choices.

Freedom requires responsibility to choose who we are above and beyond our immediate impulses, needs, and social pressures, so that we can genuinely express the type of person we want to be, live the life we truly want to live, leave the legacy we desire.

To many people, free will is a license to rebel not against what is unjust or hard in life but against what is best for them and true.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

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

Some people believe God is involved in every little decision we make. Some people believe you're given the free will to make the decisions. Sometimes people believe God is not involved at all.

Ultimately the person, even the child, must choose for himself.

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.

Our thoughts and our conduct are our own.

The first principle of freedom is the right to go to hell in your own handbasket.

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.

Choice, I've always believed, is all that separates us from animals.

Because to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

The power of free will is developed and confirmed by increasing the number of worthy motives which influence conduct.

Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose - and commit myself to - what is best for me.

Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man.

I believe we've been given free will, and we can take responsibility for our own lives and for creating our own environments - which I think at times can be a little much for people to deal with.

It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.

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.