Dieter F. Uchtdorf Quotes

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

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

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

Moral liberty is the power of following, in all circumstances, our sense of right and wrong, or of acting in conformity to our reflecting and moral principles, without being controlled by any contrary principles.

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

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

Free will is not the liberty to do whatever one likes, but the power of doing whatever one sees ought to be done, even in the very face of otherwise overwhelming impulse. There lies freedom, indeed.

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.

In terms of morals there is no such thing as ‘state.’ Just men. Individuals. Each responsible for his own acts.

The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.

People have choices in this life. They should exercise them responsibly.

Every person in every generation has a choice: to obey God or to do his own thing.

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

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

True freedom is not the liberty to do anything we please, but the liberty to do what we ought; and it is genuine liberty because doing what we ought now pleases us

Free will is the liberty to choose what is right according to Gods law.

Our virtues are voluntary (and in fact we are in a sense ourselves partly the cause of our moral dispositions, and it is our having a certain character that makes us set up an end of a certain kind), it follows that our vices are voluntary also; they are voluntary in the same manner as our virtues.

Men are free to decide their own moral choices, but they are also under the necessity to account to God for those choices.

By right, as the word is employed in this subject, has always been understood discretion, that is, a full and complete power of either doing a thing or omitting it, without the person's becoming liable to animadversion or censure from another, that is, in other words, without his incurring any degree of turpitude or guilt. Now in this sense I affirm that man has no rights, no discretionary power whatever.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.

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

To what extent is any given man morally responsible for any given act? We do not know.

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?